


Celebration Prompts - A series of shorts

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Crack, Dogs, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Lies, M/M, Sex, Skinny Steve, Terminal Illnesses, dragons - there will be dragons, everything under the sun - Freeform, injuries, other stuff, prompt fics, soulmate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:19:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 28,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I asked on my tumblr for my followers to help me celebrate by sending me prompts. This is the continuing result!<br/><b>Chapter 1</b>- Tony buys Steve a dog;      <b>Chapter 2 </b>- Mamihlapinatapai<br/><b>Chapter 3 </b>- Glitter;      <b>Chapter 4 </b>- Dragons<br/><b>Chapter 5 </b>- Hips;         <b>Chapter 6 </b>- Skinny Steve<br/><b>Chapter 7 </b>- Piano;       <b>Chapter 8</b> - Comic book artist Steve, Writer Tony<br/><b>Chapter 9 </b>- Soulmates cannot lie to one another; <b>Chapter 10 </b>- Thrift shop AU<br/><b>Chapter 11</b> - Maple Syrup;    <b>  Chapter 12 </b>- Tony spoils Steve<br/><b>Chapter 13 </b>- Italian;        <b>Chapter 14</b> - Tony builds a pillow fort<br/><b>Chapter 15</b> -Tony creates art     <b>Chapter 16</b> - Electro swing<br/><b>Chapter 17</b> - Clockwork   <b>Chapter 18</b> - Tony says I love you, first<br/><b>Chapter 19</b> Drought</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony buys Steve a dog for Valentine's day for hogwartshoney

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter will be a new story with different prompts - all will be Stony - some will be funny - others sad -some sexy - others fantasy....hope you will enjoy as I celebrate many good things, with the hope of good things to come!
> 
> For those interested chapter 1, 5, and 11 (so far) are snippets of the same universe with the dogs Bear and Bunny.

“You’re sure Steve wants a dog,” Natasha says and she hikes up that one eyebrow to study him as he pats the dog’s head. The dog gazes up at Tony with glazed over eyes – he looks like he might be in some trance or something.

“He’s Captain America, it’s part of the job.” He tries not to think about how the lady at the shelter told him that Bear spent the better part of the day trying to figure out if his tail was attached to his body. He shrugs not all dogs can be geniuses.

“How do you figure?” Clint has to get in on decrease Tony’s self-confidence party regarding his newly formed relationship with his boyfriend.

“Having a Golden Retriever is as American as apple pie and Chevys.” Tony thinks that might sounds a little too much like a commercial but it’s the truth and he’s sticking to it.

“Sounds like you’re going domestic on him,” Clint says.

“And so early in the relationship,” Natasha chimes in. “Seems a little rushed, don’t you think?”

Tony huffs and the dog jerks and looks around as if he’s on the trail of something elusive. “It isn’t rushed. I think Steve will like a dog for Valentine ’s Day.”

“I think Steve would like something else for Valentine ’s Day,” Clint snickers.

“Keep your mind out of the gutter, Barton, that’s Captain America you’re talking about,” Tony says and tries not to think about how hard it’s been to keep it in his pants. Dating a blushing virgin, who is only just now coming to terms with his sexuality has been difficult if not impossible. Getting a dog is a good distraction, in the drooling, sloppy kind of way. 

“I think you’re missing the boat,” Clint says as he digs some leftovers out of the fridge. “Seriously, that boy has been hammering at the punching bags like they’ve done him wrong. You might want to pop that cherry soon before it explodes.”

“What the hell are we even talking about?” Tony snaps. “I bought a dog for my boyfriend, I am not pressuring him to have sex with me just because some fucking card companies suddenly decide it’s sex day USA.”

“Sex day?” Natasha says and that quirked eyebrow is judging him again.

“And how is Valentine’s buying a dog day?”

“I rescued slash adopted him, if you must know Legolas. I got him from the shelter. He was surrendered because his owner was a dick.”

“A dick, did it say that on the adoption papers?” Clint asks and stuffs his mouth with the last of the Buffalo wings.

“No, it didn’t. It just – I mean how could anyone just leave their dog at the shelter when he’s 12 years old. I mean no one is going to fucking adopt him at that age, you know what I mean?” Tony says and settles down next to the senior dog who still doesn’t recognize his tail as his own. The dog lays his head on Tony’s shoulder, his white muzzle snuggled near his neck. 

“Really? Twelve?” Natasha curses. “Some people are assholes.” She tilts her head and then smiles. “You did good, Tony. I’m sure Steve will love him.”

“Thanks,” Tony says and Clint nods a few times with his mouth full.

“Tony did what good?” Steve walks in and he’s carrying a basket of his folded laundry. Tony has no idea why the man insists on doing his own laundry – they have a service for that shit. His eyes widen when he sees the dog. “A dog.”

Tony pops up and smiles. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Steve drops the basket. “A dog.”

“Uh oh,” Clint says and tosses the rest of the leftovers in the garbage, motions Natasha to follow him, and they escape.

“You don’t like him?” Tony says and feels shredded. How could Steve - **Steve** of all people not like dogs. He’s Captain America. How can he not like dogs? 

Steve scrubs at his hair and then catches the back of his neck as he tries to explain, “I – It’s not like I don’t like dogs. I’m – I don’t.”

“What, what is it? His name is Bear – You can call him Bucky Bear for your friend. I won’t even be jealous,” Tony says and knows he’s digging the hole wider and deeper. 

“No, I just.” Steve sighs and drops his hand. “I was bitten when I was a kid by a dog. So I’m a little frightened of them.”

“You’re afraid of dogs? Captain America is afraid of dogs?” Tony says and he thinks he might start laughing but he holds it back as best as he can.

“Don’t laugh, it’s a serious phobia,” Steve says and smiles – half-heartedly at the old dog.

“You’re right, it’s okay, okay,” Tony says and looks down at the old fella. “I guess I can bring him back.”

“I don’t- you don’t have to,” Steve says. “You said his name is Bear?”

“Yeah, he’s 12 years old, no one is going to adopt him because he’s so old,” Tony says and cringes. Way to make Steve feel guilty.

“But he’s been adopted, by you,” Steve says and smiles. 

“We can keep him?” Tony asks and Bear thumps his tail on the tiled floor, his eyes languid and his tongue hanging out. 

“I can try and get over my phobia, I guess,” Steve says and reaches out, tentatively to touch the dog. 

Bear only sits there, closes his eyes like he’s having the best day of his life as Steve strokes him. 

“He’s a nice dog.”

“He is,” Tony says. “Gentle, Goldens are known for being great dogs.”

Steve pets him a few more times and his smile widens. “He might be nice to have around. Thank you, Tony, this is a great Valentine gift and, to think Pepper warned me about overly large stuffed animals. Wait until I tell her about real animals!”

Tony only frowns.

“What about my gift to you?” Steve says.

“Hmm, you don’t have to?” Tony answers.

“Does Bear have somewhere to sleep?” Steve asks as he goes to pick up the laundry basket. 

“Yeah, I bought him a bed, he’ll go to it if you tell him to go to his corner.”

“Okay,” Steve says and then turns to the dog. “Go to your corner, Bear.”

Bear thinks about it, stands up, licks Steve’s hand, and then trots off to the great room. They both peer around the corner to see Bear circling the large over stuffed cushion of a bed, before he settles his old bones down to sleep.

“Okay then,” Steve says and turns back to Tony. He rifles through the basket and brings up a lacy under garment. “I thought we could try this.”

“Wh-what?”

“If you don’t like it,” Steve says and blushes. “I won’t, but I like to wear them. And I’d like you to see me in them. And I-.”

“Wait, you’re not a blushing virgin, are you?”

“No,” Steve says with furrowed brows. “Why would you think that?”

“All this wasted time, seriously?” Tony says and grabs Steve’s hand. 

“What?”

“Bring the panties, we’re going to go walk the dog and I’m not talking about the dog, dog, if you know what I mean.”


	2. Mamihlapinatapai for arukou arukou

It scares him. He admits it to himself, every time he sees it. It scares him. The ache that grows in his chest beneath the scars and light hurts with a subtle agony he cannot express or describe. When he sees him like this, quiet and in repose, he wants to jump and rush and shake and throttle Steve until he wakes.

Because it scares him.

It terrifies Tony when he sees his love lying, quietly, slumbering in their bed. The stillness holds Steve in its grip and, for one horrifying moment Tony thinks, Tony fears Steve has left him - slipped into some absurd version of Sleeping Beauty, only to be awoken with love's first kiss.

And then Tony knows it will not be him who could possibly awaken his beauty, because how could he, Tony, the war monger, the designer of weapons of mass destruction, how could he who has so much to pay for in order to earn redemption, how could he be the person, the first love of a man destine, and worthy enough for the serum to work on? How?

It scares him to believe his kiss could possibly touch those full lips, red and warm, to bring them to life again.

It scares him that those lips might not be warm, that the life might have drained out of him and he might be cradled in the arms of the night beast, of the monster who captured him once and kept him prisoner for seventy odd years.

It hadn’t started with a kiss but with a simple glance a look shared and unspoken across the conference room table. It shouldn’t have meant anything. They should have had their heads in the game. But as they often will, these things come upon him when he’s unaware. He’d been tired of listening to Fury drone on and on about the latest threat assessments. He’d almost walked out a few times, but knew the strategic team leader, their Captain, would frown both figuratively and literally at that. So he kept in his seat, staring aimlessly at his phone, waiting for the monopoly of his time to end.

And then he looked up.

Steve, who had been sitting across the table, to his left, had met his glance. A glance that turned into a gaze. Tony had been sure, at that moment, that Steve’s attention had been drawn to him. They shared a wordless moment. And yet it felt like a million exchanges of energy and ideas. The way Steve’s brow creased, the way he let the corners of his mouth hitch, the way the light glinted in those blue, blue eyes set words in Tony’s brain until his neurons burst. He felt – in those seconds because it could only be seconds – that he had been seen. _Seen_. Not as if someone just looked at him, but as if he’d exposed his soul. The strangest thing was that he didn’t feel violated or embarrassed. The strangest thing was that he felt comfortable and perfect. The strangest thing was that he’d seen Steve’s exposed soul as if he’d grazed a hand down his perfect skin, caressed the jut of a naked shoulder, the curve of a pectoral, as if he knew more than he should.

At that moment, he shared a world in a microcosm. It had been mamihlapinatapai – a shared and understood look between two people and it had been something so much more. It had been a union, an understanding, a comprehension that in whatever creation of the world they inhabited they would always circle one another, always be together, juxtaposed, entangled, and fused.

That night they shared their first kiss. It really hadn’t been a kiss but a collision of epic portions. Whatever had happened in that dull conference room riled them both into unknown territories so that by the time they stepped into the Tower’s kitchen, they were ready to battle. By the time they’d clashed, Steve had him up against a wall, lips and chests and hips pressed together, breath hot and moist. The clatter of dishes and pans and everything else seemed a distant, inconsequential thing. Universes exploded with less fanfare.

Ever since that day, that moment of mamihlapinatapai – they had been inseparable – on the battle field, at home, in bed. Tony had finally found his match and mate. It scares him to think of Steve away from him.

But that is what happened, what happens again and again. They are Avengers, they are destine to be separated by chance, by evil, by duty. Tony could have gone on this last mission, he should have gone. He’d called off at the last moment. He’d thought nothing of it, but because of his lack of air support, they’d taken quite a hit. Steve doesn’t blame him, after all he has a company and responsibilities outside of the Avengers unlike the rest of them. He’s Tony Stark, not only Iron Man. 

“Yes, Tony Stark,” he murmurs and, as Tony Stark, he realizes his first concern is the man slumbering in the bed with the fading bruises. Tony crosses the distance between them, settles on the bed and reaches out to stroke a hand down a lingering gash.

Steve shifts, slightly and then his lips part. He doesn’t wince, or flinch but Tony wants to apologize all the same.

“Sorry,” he whispers and closes his eyes. He’s terrified of the moment that might come, that lurks like a shadow when their ability to speak without words will disappear. When Steve will no longer want him, when their orbits will break and falter.

“What for?” Steve says and his eyes are glassy still and his words rasped.

Tony only shakes his head and crumples into Steve. He notches his head where he knows there’s no injuries, no hurts. He wants to beg for forgiveness, he wants to justify why Steve should love him. He wants to know they will always be.

Steve wraps a hand around Tony’s head, buries his face in Tony’s hair and kisses him. 

Tony holds on through the night, holding back the terror, holding back the fear, holding onto the one thing he never wants to lose.


	3. Glitter for therubywriter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I went there.

“You promised me it wouldn’t stick, Steve.”

“I told you to use the stuff from the special store, not Walmart,” Steve says and Tony can see the smile creeping onto his face again. He’s not even doing anything to suppress it anymore. “I don’t even know why you have that up here at all.”

“It itches like a son of a bitch,” Tony says. “How the hell am I supposed to go to the briefing this afternoon? I am not going to the briefing, this is the perfect excuse to not go to the meeting.”

“I don’t think it’s a good excuse.” Steve crosses his arms and glares at Tony. How does he look all Captain America without a stitch of clothing on plus while he’s sitting on the counter in their master suite bathroom? Even swinging his legs back and forth like he’s ten years old, he’s still has that air of legend about him.

“It’s a good excuse.” Tony yelps. He stands up from the bath and points to his abused dick. “Look at me, I cannot go to the meeting like this.”

“Are you planning on going naked?” Steve asks and smiles at Tony’s affliction. 

“No, but-.”

“Are you planning on whipping it out and showing everyone your new -.” He stammers over the words. “Your new decorations.”

“It isn’t a decoration, it’s a mutilation. Look at me,” Tony says and wags a little bit.

Steve smiles and scratches at his jaw. “I don’t really see a problem.”

“Of course, you don’t, you aren’t the one with glitter glued all over your dick.”

“I told you to use the one we bought from that sex store, place on the internet. Whatever it was called. But you-.”

Tony looks down at his poor abused dick and it’s sparkling in the light. The glitter is rainbow colored and, with the water from the bath, his dick is positively a disco rod of delight. “You need to do something about this.”

Steve raises an eyebrow and he smirks. “What would you like me to do? I don’t have anything in my saliva to dissolve that, you know.” 

“I was thinking of putting it in other places.”

“You are not putting that in me. I don’t want glitter in my butt.” 

“But it’s okay for me to have glitter stuck on my dick, indefinitely.” 

“Sir, would you like me to look up ways to remove glitter glue from skin?”

“In painless ways? Yes, JARVIS, please do.” Tony steps out of the tub, grabs a towel and slings it around his hips. As he passes Steve he mutters, “At least someone around here loves me.”

Steve hops down from the counter and follows him to their master suite. The bed is a mess of sheets, pillows and glitter. Back to the scene of the crime, Tony slumps on the bed. 

“Tony, you’re being a little immature about this,” Steve says and knocks him in the shoulder as if they’re best pals and not boyfriends, as if they’re school mates and not life mates. “It’s only a little glitter.”

“Sir, the solutions I have been able to find include using nail polish, hot soap and water, and steel wool.”

As Tony winces at the thought of scrubbing his dick with steel wool, Steve hisses and hunches his shoulders. “Geez, JARVIS, you don’t use steel wool on that part.”

“That part,” Tony says and rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, say dick or cock or even penis. Do not use member or staff that just freaks me out.”

“I was trying to be polite,” Steve says.

“Polite, it was polite when you suggested a little bit of fun?” Tony picks up the glitter glue bottle and twists it around. “You let me put this on my dick.”

“I thought I was from the sex store,” Steve says. He sits on the bed next to Tony and wraps his arm around Tony’s shoulder. “It isn’t so bad, it’ll wash off eventually.”

“It itches.”

Steve inhales and exhales deeply, loudly, and purposefully. “Do you want me to give you a blowjob? I could do that, make you feel better? Maybe it will help.”

“Would you?” Tony says and already the sparkles of his desire grows.

Steve drops down to his knees. “It’s the least I can do, considering you got all dress up for the occasion.” He winks.

Later at the afternoon briefing when Natasha asks why Steve has glitter on his tongue and on his lips, Captain America stutters over his answer. Tony only bows his head and shifts in his chair – it really is itchy as all get out.

“I jus-I don’t. It wasn’t what-.” Steve stops. Fury glowers at him. Thor seems to understand the situation intuitively. Clint isn’t paying any attention to anyone. Bruce stares into the space between them like he needs to keep evenly balanced about it.

Natasha only shakes her head and says, “You do know they sell edible glitter, you don’t have to use-.”

“Natasha,” Steve cuts her off.

“Well, while this is all very illuminating in so many ways I wish it wasn’t,” Fury says. “We still have work to do, children.”

“I don’t think children use glitter that way,” Clint says.

“That’s enough.” Fury uses that eye like a laser beam. They get back to the meeting, all the while Tony squirms and Steve licks his lips trying to remove the glitter.

When the meeting concludes, Natasha tells Steve to get Tony some nail polish remover. Steve thanks her but turns a nice beet red. 

“Use the moisturizing kind otherwise it’ll dry out and I can’t say it won’t fall off,” Natasha says and exits the room before Steve can reply. 

When everyone departs, Tony sidles up to Steve and says, “I think it’s killing me, it itches so much.”

“Natasha said to use nail polish remover.”

“I am not using acetone on my dick,” Tony says. “I think we should try friction.”

Through clenched teeth, Steve says, “I am not having you put that thin-.”

“Dick, say it like you love it.”

Steve hisses and then starts over, “Okay, you want me to say it, fine. I am not having you stick your glitter covered dick in my ass.”

“Come on, Steve, it’s so itchy. I need the friction to get it off.” He offers up his most pathetic face, big eyes, stuck out lower lip. He looks positively sorrowful, he knows – he’s practiced in front of the mirror.

“Damn it, fine, fine.”

Tony has to admit, the next morning staring at the iridescent cleft of Steve’s ass is pretty well worth the inconvenience of glitter itch.


	4. Dragons for cameron-mckell

When he’s small and thin and frail no one thinks about his totem, no one says anything. They expect it to be like this, weak and fragile like him. What surprises everyone happens to be the form his soul totem takes. Most would assume his totem to be helpless mouse, or insect. Instead, his totem takes the form of a female dragon with broad wings and a regally shaped head. She even has iridescent colored eyes – what most would call an alpha dragon which is a rare thing indeed. 

The other children when they see Steve’s totem beat him soundly and daily for her appearance. She learns to stay hidden after a week of suffering on his part, though he calls her out at night. She peers out of the shadows of his soul and bounces on his bed. Sometimes when his mother nurtures him during his illnesses, Tessie comes out and nestles close to him. She even allows Steve’s mother to scratch under her chin or near her fire gland. 

The doctors tell his mother it isn’t natural for a boy to have a female totem and that there’s something wrong with him. It doesn’t matter, they tell his mother. She looks sadly at him and he knows what everyone thinks. It doesn’t matter because no one expects Steve to grow up. With all of his maladies they expect he won’t reach adulthood; that he’ll be dead and his totem will have faded into the ether. 

But he doesn’t die and his little dragon follows him through his teenaged years, through his own awakenings. When he realizes he’s attracted to Bucky and not to the girls he keeps bringing around he huddles in the corner of his room and hangs his head. The doctors were right, there is something wrong with him, he thinks. 

The good thing is that most of the girls don’t like him anyway. They have totems like dogs or cats or birds – none of them dragons, the rarest of them all. Most of the time human lovers have totems that match. Dogs to dogs, cats to cats. Once in a while there will be the infrequent match horse and dog or cat and bird. It is strange and wonderful, but the more ordinary match is that the totems are the same.

A dragon comes along only once every 100 million or so people. Steve accepts that he will not have a human love, especially since he’s attached to a female dragon and everyone thinks there’s something wrong with him anyhow. His mother, before she dies, encourages him, tells him totems are your soul resolved. He’s not sure what that means but he accepts it. 

Tessie never takes any of his maudlin moods to heart. She grows a little but she’s still only as big as a medium sized dog, not a dragon. She should be adult sized by the time he reaches 18, but she isn’t. She doesn’t seem to mind her size or her limitations. Because she hasn’t reached her maturity she cannot breathe fire or fly. She often watches the other totems as they prance and interact, but they shun her. Many times, Steve sits with her curled in his lap and he rubs her with oils and talks sweetly to her. 

When he finally joins the army with the support of Doctor Erskine, he thinks, maybe, just maybe Project Rebirth will help his dragon totem. Doctor Erskine warns him it could harm her. It had done hideous things to Johann Schmidt’s totem – a cougar who turned into an animal crazed for blood and deformed. 

Steve considers the choices before he steps into the pod. When he asks Tessie her thoughts, she only purrs at him and blinks her eyes.

_What will be will be, sweet one._

He doesn’t think it’s much of an answer. Peggy picks him up in the morning, her silver fox totem curled around her shoulders like a stole. The fox jumps down and smells Tessie with his pink nose. He thumps his tail and prances about trying to get Tessie to play. Tessie only rolls her eyes and glances at him. Both Peggy and Steve laugh. It is a shared moment. They are both outcasts in a way. She with her male fox and him with his female dwarf dragon. 

He steps into the pod and Tessie disappears into the shadowed places of his soul. Totems don’t always show themselves, most hide during the day and only appear in rich and warm company. Tessie is insanely protective of Steve and so she always hangs out in his world, not spending too much time in her own – where ever that may be. 

After the experiment, after Erskine loses his life, after the Hydra agent, Tessie finally makes her appearance. She’s the same and he’s grateful, though deep down he’d hope she’d gain from the project as well. She doesn’t seem to mind. He hugs her all the same.

He does notice as he gains more confidence in the road show, she appears happier. She does little flights, two or three hops around the parking lot of the theaters they play in. Even one of the USO girls mentions it.

She’s sitting with her cat totem on her lap, absently stroking and she points to Tessie. “She’s really doing well. Look, she can fly a whole three feet now.”

Steve smiles and the girl smiles back. They share a coke later that day. They ride the bus together, he kisses her late in the evening. One day during the road trip she pulls him in the back dressing room, hikes up her short skirt and shimmies out of her panties. She stuffs her hand down his tights and works him to hardness and then climbs up on him. He has sex for the first time in a dressing room with a girl with red lipstick smudged on her costume, and wild blonde curls. When they finish, she pecks him on the cheek, thanks him and then disappears. He doesn’t see her alone again. He wonders what he did wrong.

Tessie gazes at him with wonder and he notices that her fire glands are warm to the touch. By the time he rescues Bucky and the 107th, Tessie is as large as a small pony, and Steve finds his new body easier to handle, his thoughts become more focused and more driven. Bucky with his bear totem stands by his side like a sentinel, though their totems never do get along well together. Tessie always hisses at Winter and the bear only tolerates the dragon. 

By the time Bucky dies and Steve puts the plane in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, Tessie is large – nearly the size of a Clydesdale. She comforts him as the waters rise, as the life leaks out of him, as the coldness infects the hollows of his bones. She says goodbye and he’s sorry he never got to see her fly.

oOo

Everyone thinks he’s weird, or deviant or something, since he doesn’t have a soul totem. It happens. One in a 100 million people don’t have soul totems, they have nothing. Or their totems never chose to appear, or their totems slipped into their own dimension in the shadows and never show themselves in the human dimension. He cried about it when he was a little boy, cursed it when he was a teenager, and doesn’t give a damn as one of the wealthiest men on the face of the planet. It’s easy to be war monger when he doesn’t have a soul.

Tony tells himself this when it’s dark and cold and he fucks his way through a dozen men and women in a week. Their totems always stay hidden, concealed when he’s around because it’s considered an illness to the totems. The totems can’t see him because he doesn’t have one of his own. When he was little he tried to draw his out. He figured it was only in hiding because his father was a dick. But the fact remained even after his parents died, his totem never appeared. 

Scientists in the field said that those without totems had deficiencies in their nexus – the juncture of their soul to the space time continuum. They used a lot of mumbo jumbo that really made no sense no matter how much Tony studied it. Even the brilliant Doctor Banner couldn’t figure it out. The experts do agree on one thing. Totems links or manifestations of souls to visitors from another dimension. The visitors attach to people as portal, as guides, as teachers. They learn and teach and bring it back to their own dimension. They are not truly animals but manifestations of our psyche as the aliens see us.

It’s acid dreams as far as Tony’s concerned. He thinks the whole damned world might be high. But even when he gets high, he doesn’t have a totem visit him. Of course once he’s secure in his life, enjoying the freedom of not having a strange alien creature haunting him all the days of his life, that’s when HE arrives.

Tony happens to be lying with a battery hooked up to his chest with wires in a filthy cave when he opens his eyes and nearly screams in terror – not because of the battery- but because of the huge lizard like head sitting on his chest.

_It took you long enough, young one._

“What the fuck?” Tony says.

_Indeed_

It is the only thing the fucking monster of a dragon says to him that day. He hangs out mostly when no one else in around in the cave. He finally tells Tony his name about a month into his imprisonment. 

_Vincenzo._

“That’s ridiculous. I’m calling you Vinny.”

The dragon is not amused. Yet he still answers to Vinny. When Tony finally escapes Vinny decides to make himself known and breathes fire on the terrorists who killed Yinsen. They fly off together and land in the desert. Tony is rescued.

The headlines focus more on the fact he suddenly has a totem – the largest dragon totem ever recorded than the fact he spent three months as a prisoner in Afghanistan. After that his life changes and he becomes Iron Man.

With Vinny by his side they fly the skies. He discovers a way to save his life from the palladium poisoning with a little bit of hints from dear old Dad, and they barrel toward life with Pepper and her little snowy white ferret totem. Vinny and Clara seem to get along fine, though it’s obvious to both Tony and Pepper that they will never truly be together. Their totems aren’t compatible, and that always says something. Science cannot explain how it works, but it’s true more often than not that compatible totems – the same animal – end up linking a relationship together. It is a nexus of souls, or souls resolved.

Tony might be too busy or too high on the feeling of shooting down a god, but he never notices the Captain’s totem. It had never been published what type of totem the Captain had. The movies always cast different types of totems. One popular one had been an American eagle, another had been a lion. No one knew. There had been no photographs of the animal, though that was not uncommon. Totem aliens never liked being photographed or filmed. Some (the religious) said it was because they were not aliens at all, but angels – guardian angels. The more scientifically inclined said that totems were not in the same dimension and therefore could not be captured using normal film. 

Movies depicting Captain America’s totem used animals as stand ins. As a child, Tony imagined that Captain America didn’t have a totem, like him. Meeting the Captain and not seeing a totem verified what he suspected. 

Until.

Until he ends up lying amongst the rubble on a street in midtown Manhattan after carrying a nuclear warhead to the void of space. Until he startles awake from the edge of death to see not the familiar eyes of Vinny staring down at him, but the iridescent ones of a regal alpha female dragon perched over him joined by the relieved face of Captain America.

He can barely breathe, cannot say a word. Has no idea what to say when Vinny appears in his vision and curls his neck around that of the beautiful female dragon. Instead he makes a joke and tries not to see how perfectly the two totems fit together and how lovely Steve’s smile actually is…

Later, much later, when most of the Avengers have scattered after their little dinner, Tony asks Steve.

Doesn’t really ask, only states. “You knew.”

“Yes,” Steve says and watches as his dragon flies with Tony’s. His face is serene in the dusk of day as they stand in Tony’s ruined tower.

“You saw Vinny and you knew,” Tony says.

Steve frowns and turns to study Tony. “Yes, I knew.”

“But I never saw Tessie.”

“I suppose not,” Steve says and keeps stoic and quiet about it.

“Can you tell me why?” Tony says.

Steve licks his lips once and then faces Tony. His expression unreadable. “In my day, a man with a female totem wasn’t look on – well wasn’t look on very highly. Plus Tessie and I got used to her having to stay in the shadows a lot. People didn’t want to know that Captain America was a sissy.”

“Jesus,” Tony says and grimaces. “You don’t think that way, do you?”

“What way?”

“That,” Tony says and watches at the dragons do a swerving loop in the skies above New York. He tries to find the right words. “That it’s wrong, that being gay is wrong?”

“I don’t see myself as wrong, anymore,” Steve says and bows his head before he looks back up at his dragon. “When Doctor Erskine told me the serum would fix everything that was wrong with me, I figured it would fix that. I was scared it would change Tessie. It didn’t. So I figured it wasn’t wrong. It’s the way I’m made and Tessie – well – she’s good. I like her the way she is, she accepts me. I accept her even though she’s not gay.”

Tony guffaws. “Did you just make a joke?”

“I was trying to, you’re taking all of this very seriously.”

“I wanted to be sensitive to your sensibilities.”

“So you believe it’s like a soul bond, meeting your totem’s match, then?” Steve asks and waits.

Tony cannot ignore the fact that the glint of the fading sun in Steve’s eyes turns them from a deep blue chasing the color of the sky to the emerald greens he’s seen in the waters of the Caribbean. 

“Some biological scientists say that the totem might not even be aliens, it might be the manifestation of our-.”

“Maybe it is just souls,” Steve says and steps into his personal space. The presence of Steve, his bulk and weight feels like a world, his gravity pulls Tony closer. “Could it be just souls, destine to revolve around one another, be with one another?”

“I’m not-.”

“Tell me if I’m wrong.”

Steve leans in for a kiss that two days ago Tony would never have believed would happen. The press of lips, the taste of tongues, the dance of souls intertwined strips away Tony’s need to understand, to reject or even to wait. He falls into it like a man starved of hope for far too long. It feels like his first kiss, as if he’s never touched another human being before and he knows he’ll never kiss another one again – not like this. Not ever like this.

When they break apart, in the distance he hears the calls of their dragons as the sun departs the day. He holds onto Steve and knows something different, something new has just begun.


	5. Hips for onemadeofglass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh and you thought it would be nasty --- ;)

“Hip dysplasia.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Tony asks as he strokes a hand down Bear’s head. The old Golden Retriever squints his eyes and pants as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. Steve stands next to them with a shocked look on his face.

The young veterinarian who is probably about twelve from Tony’s estimates, grins at them and her ponytail swings. “It means he’s old?”

“Are you asking or are you saying something that’s meaningful, because I’m not hearing either,” Tony snaps. He only does it because over the last three months that they’ve had the dog, Steve only finally came around to Bear in the last few week or so. He started to bring Bear on walks and occasionally brought him out for runs. Until the last few days when Bear would come home from his walk with Steve and disappear to his corner, not wanting to get up, even for a treat.

The vet, her name is Doctor Marcy, and she reminds Tony of Marcy from the Peanuts – Peppermint Patty’s side kick. Except she’s taller than Tony would imagine Marcy being – since Marcy is perpetually stuck at age 6 or 7 or some shit. She pets Bear on the head and then scratches at his ears.

“Mister Stark, Captain Rogers, you have to understand that Bear is a senior dog. He has bad hips and on top of that his hips have a condition called hip dysplasia. It occurs when the joint or the top of the femur doesn’t sit well in the pelvic joint. The ball of the femur and the joint are deformed-.”

“Deformed, our dog is deformed?” Steve says and he looks like he’s about to swallow his tongue.

“No, many large breeds, and even some smaller breeds have this issue.” She pats the dog and then moves to the file laying open on the counter. Scribbling she says, “It isn’t uncommon. I can give you a prescription for some pain medication.”

“There’s nothing we can do?” Tony says. “No surgery?”

“Bear’s twelve years old, he’s lucky to have been adopted at that age. I wouldn’t recommend putting him through the stress of a surgery. Medication will help with the arthritis-.”

“He has arthritis, too?” Steve winces and looks like he’s being taken down by the list of things wrong with Bear.

“He’s old, it’s expected. The medicine will help him. He’ll be able to move around and play and run again without pain.” She smiles at them and her nose wrinkles up. She’s cute but Tony still wants to pop her in the face for scaring the shit out of Steve.

“Without pain? He’s been in pain all this time?” Steve says and his color drains out of his face.

Doctor Marcy finally decides now is a good time to realizes she traumatized the good Captain. “Oh, oh, no don’t – are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

Steve has his hand to his face, holding it over his eyes as if to deny the reality of the situation. “I think, I – yeah I think I need to sit down.”

Tony does a double take as Steve nearly staggers into a chair a vet tech drags in for him. The vet tells the tech who has to be about ten if Tony was estimating, to bring some water. Doctor Marcy puts her hand on Steve’s shoulder and says, “It’s okay, Bear is very lucky to have you both. He’ll be fine. We’ll take care of his pain, manage it.”

“Pain?” Steve says and hangs his head, arms limp at his sides.

“I think you’re just making it worse,” Tony comments and then tells Bear to wait. He kneels at Steve’s feet, waves the Doctor away, and places his hands on Steve’s knees. “Babe, what’s going on here?”

“Bear has been in pain – all this time – in pain. And I forced him to go on walks, and runs. He never refused. He always went with me.” Steve blinks too rapidly and Tony thinks the situation is quickly getting out of control. 

“Babe, he’s an old dog. He’s gonna be fine.”

“I should have known better,” Steve says. “That’s just it, right? He’s an old dog, I should have known he couldn’t go on runs with me. I should hav-.”

The Doctor chimes in, “Captain Rogers, your dog loves to go on walks and runs. To deprive him of that would not be a good thing.”

Steve sniffles and looks up at the petite doctor. He looks all of twelve himself now. “But you said he was in pain.”

“Yes, he’s been in pain, but we can manage it. We can also decide how long his walks should be, considering the state of his hips. I would recommend that you do not, not take him out. He needs it. He’s healthy and happy.”

“And in pain.”

“Right now, yes, but later when we get him on the right dosage, no. We’ll take care to ensure that he’s properly taken care of, you’ll be pleased with his relief, I swear.”

“You swear.”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Steve shifts his attention to Tony. “Tony?”

“If the doctor says it’s good, then we should trust her, Steve.”

Steve nods and accepts the water that the vet tech brings in. “Okay.” He sips it. “Okay, we can try it, but I’m not going to bring him on runs, just walks. Maybe we can get him massages or acupuncture or a special Jacuzzi bath or something.”

The last he directs to Tony, who only smiles as the Doctor chuckles into her file as she continues to write. 

“We’ll do whatever is necessary.”

After Doctor March completes her notes, she says, “You know you might want to consider a younger dog.”

“We’re not getting rid of Bear,” Tony says at the same time Steve cringes. 

“No, I don’t mean get rid of Bear. A younger dog, not a puppy, but an adult dog that’s good with other dogs might be a good companion for Bear as well as one that can go on the runs.” Doctor Marcy shrugs. “There’s an adult dog we have that the owner surrendered to us because she’s being deployed and can’t bring her dog with her.”

“She’s giving up her dog because she’s being deployed?” Tony frowns. “What about family?”

“No family as far as I understand it and none of her friends have room for the dog. Would you like to see the dog?”

Tony shares a glance with Steve and then they both consider Bear. Steve is the one who answers, “Only if Bear likes the dog.”

“Okay, let me have Cindy bring her in,” Doctor Marcy says and disappears. 

In only a handful of minutes Doctor Marcy is back with a bottle of pills, a list of directions, and a small dog with pricked ears, short legs, and absolutely no tail. 

“What is that a cross between a rabbit and a dog?” Tony says and Steve rolls his eyes.

“That’s a Corgi, Tony,” Steve says. “She’s adorable. What’s her name?”

“Her name actually happens to be Bunny, strangely enough,” the vet says. 

Bunny pads over to Bear who leans down to sniffs her and thumps his tail a few times as the younger dog waggles her whole body to demonstrate her joy. She jumps about a centimeter of the ground during her little dance of happiness.

“Bear doesn’t seem to overly excited about her,” Tony says.

“He’s not dismissing her either, he seems to be okay,” Steve says. 

“Why don’t we do this – trial basis for now. See how they get along and then if they do. No problem. If they don’t, then you can bring her back here?”

They agree and somehow, Tony and Steve leave the vet with a pocketful of pills, a list of directions, and an extra dog.

Steve is nearly hopping in his seat he’s so excited. Bear settles into the back seat without a problem as little Bunny curls next to him. Tony pulls the car out of the parking garage and Steve smiles. 

“I think this is going to work out just fine.”

“This is a lot more work, you know, two dogs,” Tony says. “It’s exponential.”

“I know,” Steve agrees but he’s beaming which is a lot better than his near catastrophic meltdown at the vet’s office.

“Lots more work, more taking out and caring,” Tony says. “Remember three months ago you didn’t even like dogs.”

“I like them just fine now,” Steve says and peers at them in the backseat. “This is great.”

Tony scowls.

“Would it help to tell you I’ve been wearing the lacy red one all day?”

“All day?” Tony gulps. “It’s too tight, I thought.”

“Tight, yep, rubs in all the right places,” Steve says and smiles.

He’s positively wicked and Tony wonders if he’s been scammed by two dogs and a superhero in lace underwear.


	6. Skinny Steve for anonymous

He doesn’t mean to stare but he does. He feels like a deviant, a pervert but he watches in the shadows as the young man moves. He isn’t dancing, but he might as well be. The way he touches each brush, the way the paint moves from the palette to his brush to the canvas is something sacred, something religious that Tony doesn’t comprehend, nor does he want to intrude upon. It is a quiet harmony of man and art together. 

Tony has created things, invented and discovered. He’s been a futurist for as long as he can remember, but he’s never done this – he’s never been able to reach into the heart and soul of someone, some part of the Earth and breathe into it to master it like this young man most obviously can. 

“He’s talented,” Pepper says.

He’d forgotten she is standing next to him. They are in an art class, he’s supposed to be choosing one of the artists to endorse and support with the Maria Stark Foundation’s annual stipend. It’s a ritual they go through every year. It’s something he hates and Pepper drags him to for PR or some crazy shit that drives him mad. Every year he complains, every year he ends up going to make Pepper happy. 

“Don’t you think, Tony?” Pepper says.

The artist moves the paint again – it isn’t a rainbow of colors, just browns and whites as he smears it across the canvas. But as he does it he molds it, changes it, like some kind of magician and it transforms into something beautiful, into the muscular back of a man. It clearly isn’t the model they are supposed to be painting. The artist isn’t even looking at the nude young woman. When Tony actually tears his eyes away from the work on the canvas to look at the artist, he notices how possessed, how single minded he looks. Tony knows that look, understands it in the places in his bones where no one else has ventured. Though he cannot know the sanctity of art the way this young man does.

“Tony?” Pepper says and she sounds a little off. “Tony?”

He jerks to attention and frowns at her. “Wh-what is it?”

“I asked if you’d like to talk with the young man?”

“Yes, yes, I would,” Tony says and moves to approach him, but Pepper catches his arm and pulls him back.

“After the session, we’ll go outside and wait for the class to be over.”

Tony doesn’t want to go, he’d rather stay put and study the young man as he works. What he’s painting is a master piece of life. Tony once heard a story of how Michelangelo had been so consumed with his sculpture of Moses that he’d damaged it with a hammer yelling at it to speak because of its life like beauty. Tony hasn’t a clue if that’s true or not. All he knows is that the young man before him with the thin back, the nearly anemic look to his skin might be the spirited by the great masters.

“Come on,” Pepper hauls him out of the studio and they wait in hall until they are invited back to the Dean’s office. 

The Dean smiles and offers them coffee which is nothing but bitter. “So, you’ve seen the students.”

“Yes,” Pepper says and Tony feels shocked, almost entranced by the talent he saw. He might even describe it as thunderstruck. 

“We’re interested in the-.” He doesn’t even know the young man’s name. “Blonde, thin, looks like he’s anemic and needs a few more pounds of meat in his diet.”

“No, that’s Rogers, he’ll never do,” the Dean says and Tony recalls the man’s name is Schmidt. He has a bald head and a fierce red look to his skin like he’s sat too many hours in the tanning bed. “You want Zola or Hodge. They’re my best students.”

“I didn’t see anyone as goo-.”

“Let me show you,” Dean Schmidt says and goes to his desk. He hunts around and finds a tablet. “They have exquisite portfolios.” He brings the tablet over and hands it to Tony. 

Pepper takes it and then gives it over to Tony. They scroll through the designated photos of the aforementioned students’ work. It’s good, Tony has to admit that and Pepper seems to appreciate it. But what stands out the most is the conformity. They’ve each done the same models, the same exercises. They’ve excelled but they haven’t broken through the box, they aren’t innovators, they aren’t artists.

“It’s good, they’re good. But I still want Rogers,” Tony says and he realizes how it sounds. “For art, I want Rogers to be the Maria Stark Foundation Scholar of the Year.”

“That’s not how it’s done,” Schmidt says and looks to Pepper for assistance.

“Tony, we ask certain students to submit their work,” Pepper says. “You interview them after you take a look at their work during a studio session. After that you pick.”

“I interview them,” Tony mutters into his shoulder.

“Okay, I do,” Pepper says into her hand as she fake coughs.

“Well, I’d like to interview Rogers now.”

“Tony, it-.”

“This isn’t the way it should be, Zola is clearly the candidate,” Schmidt says. He grabs the tablet from their hands. “Besides, the bursar’s office informed me today that Rogers will not be attending the Institute after this session. He’s failed to pay and he will not be allowed to register.”

“All the more reason to give him the money,” Tony says and begins to stand.

“Miss Potts, you must-.” Schmidt says.

“No, I must follow what Mister Stark directs, Dean,” Pepper says. “We’d like to contact Mister -.”

“Steven, Steven Rogers.”

“We’ll want to talk with Steven Rogers as soon as possible. We’ll also pay his outstanding bills.” Pepper smiles. It’s one of those smiles that Tony is always grateful has never been turned on him. 

“Yes, certainly,” Schmidt says and his expression reminds Tony of something out of a childhood nightmare. 

“As soon as possible,” Tony says.

They head out the door and into the hallway. Tony veers toward the studio, looks into the room and spots Steven Rogers again. Leaning, he cleans out his brush and then turns back to consider his canvas, the man he’s painted has a perfect back and musculature with a slim waist. The rise of his buttocks is only hinted at. As he studies his work, he stops and turns as if he feels Tony’s gaze on him. 

When their eyes meet, Tony can tell instantly, that something’s changed, that he’ll go to the ends of the Earth, and he understands truly what it means to be thunderstruck in love at first site.


	7. Piano for yoshimars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit content.

To find Tony, he ends up walking through the long space of the common room down the hallway. He doesn’t ask JARVIS where Tony might be, instead he follows the sounds, the low melody floating through the penthouse. He knows that there are times when Tony cannot find solace in the workshop, that even flight in the Iron Man suit cannot give him peace, that he is hunted and haunted by the hells of day and the peace of night. 

Steve doesn’t question or wonder anymore. They’ve been together for too many years for that. They’ve fought side by side, loved and hated and been through too much to test each other all the time. He trusts that when Tony needs to do this, that he will find his way back to Steve. 

Yet sometimes Tony needs a presence with him, someone to anchor him, to hold him against the tide of incoming threats. Threats are not always external, but internal and more deadly in so many ways than Steve has come to understand. He might have looked a little wary at Tony in the beginning. He might have scratched his head and tried to know why someone would be morose when they had everything in the world. But then he learned to look inside himself as well, and found those cold dark places can be consuming.

He opens the door to the room, a room that has no real name. Here, Tony has books upon books, lining the walls. There’s a certain smell to the room of a well beloved story, cherished and tucked away for another day, for a day when life runs and smashes and crashes to pieces. For a day when life ruins.

In the corner near the window sits the baby grand and Tony plays, he plays and plays and plays. He’s an artist when he touches the keys. The music robs hearts and souls. In these moods the minor key will only do, and Steve suffers through it because it is Tony bleeding out, Tony sacrificing his soul for the world.

He settles into the chair near Tony and waits for him. The piece is long and complex. Tony never makes a mistake. He plays straight through, he plays without sheet music. He’s focused and possessed. Music and art will do that to you. Steve understands this, feels it like a part of him.

He sits and listens, lets the music lull him to a serenity while at the same time knowing that it only riles Tony. It courses through Tony until he’s broken and shattered in too many ways, the pieces crumbled all over the floor like fragments of crystal. The pieces are sharp and bite and will leave Steve’s skin raw if he lets them. But he doesn’t mind, it’s part of bringing Tony back from the edge. 

As the piece wears on, Steve slips off his shoes and socks, and then slowly rises. He unbuckles his belt, tugs off his jeans and boxers. He places them on the couch and pulls his shirt off. He’s naked and waiting, because this is part of what happens now. This will bring Tony back to him. 

A sacrifice.

Steve knows this piece of music too well, for Tony has played it too many times. Steve walks over to the piano, listens as Tony dies with the keys, as the melody aches through the air. It’s not sharp now, but dull and painful. Quietly it concludes and says it’s goodbyes as if in prayer with an Amen at the end. Tony collapses forward and sighs and Steve braces against the baby grand, waiting.

Tony stands and fully clothed lays against Steve, the bristle of his beard against Steve’s shoulders. Tony wraps his arms around Steve, holds onto him, touches his chest, feels flesh, and its vulnerabilities. He caresses and strokes until Steve’s hot and wanting. He presses against Steve and whispers.

“I don’t think we should.”

Tony does this every time. He tries to deny what makes him feel whole again. “Yes, we should.”

“No, it isn’t right.”

“It’s fine. I told you. I’ll be okay.”

“You always say that,” Tony says and his voice hurts even as he begins to unbuckle his pants. 

“Because it’s always true, Tony.”

“Don’t call me that, you don’t get to call me that.”

“No, I guess not,” Steve says and waits. He feels Tony nudge against him. 

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t, this will help you, you know that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes you do,” Steve says and pushes back. 

Tony gets anxious, he always does and breaches Steve just to spite him. After that it’s an amalgamate of pain and pleasure, a mixture of want and sex and need and love and hate. They both hit and thrust and push until Tony’s cursing and Steve’s breaking, taking the hurt from Tony and swallowing it down. 

Once it’s finished, Tony stumbles away almost drunk with the glow. Steve scoops up his clothes and puts them on. They don’t speak.

“You’ll be okay?”

Tony slumps onto the couch and shrugs. “Yeah, I always am. Because of you.”

“You’ll be fine, Tony, you know that.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I won’t be fine in the end without you.”

“I know, I wish there was something I could do-.”

“Don’t say it.”

“I won’t,” Steve says and gulps back the need to tell Tony how much he loves him and wants to be with him. But Tony won’t allow it. They only have these stolen moments, because Tony thinks he’s not worthy of it. He’s lost too much to believe in happily ever after, and Steve’s believed in the good in people too long to ever give up hope. He supposes they are made for one another in the end. 

He dresses and then steps in front of Tony. He always leaves after, he never stays; Tony doesn’t want him to stay. This time is different. This time he sinks down on the couch next to Tony. He thinks Tony might protest, but he doesn’t. Instead, his hand creeps out, and grasps Steve’s hand. He curls into Steve and they hold on like that through the night. The piano finally silent behind them.


	8. Steve as a comic book artist and Tony as the writer for Shirokou

“Seriously, that is not what I was thinking,” Steve says as he glares at the dialogue bubble above his beautiful penciled and then colored drawing.

“I think it fits, plus I’m the writer, not you,” Tony says as he leans back in his chair, his lean body all angles and sinew. 

Steve sometimes hates Tony, hates him for looking like that – looking so comfortable in his body while Steve still wonders what the hell puberty tried to do to him. One day he was 90 pounds and asthmatic with a tendency to tumble over from heart palpitations and then testosterone kicked in and bam, he turned into a beast of a man. He hasn’t been at ease in his body since, he’s always falling all over stuff and Tony notices. He sees these things and snickers at Steve’s clumsiness. Even Pepper, one of the other writers at the small comic book company, SHIELD, gives him a sympathetic eye when he happens to trip over his large clodhopper feet again.

“This is sexist, Tony, we’re trying to write a story about a woman superhero,” Steve says.

“Yeah, and how do two guys know anything about superhero women, shouldn’t it be superheroine. That’s weird sounding, isn’t that weird sounding. Superheroine, sounds like some kind of new drug on the street,” Tony says and straightens up in his chair. He doesn’t have a drafting table but a computer and multiple screens. “Wanna do lunch?”

Steve jerks at the suggestion. Tony never offers to invite him to lunch. They all go to lunch, the whole crew of them, but Steve as the new guy never gets invited. He usually bags it anyway – what with the expense- and he has Ian to look after anyhow. 

He tries to deflect because that’s what he’s good at now. “I think we need to focus on the problem at hand. Peggy wouldn’t say that,” Steve says and points to the drawing. Peggy Carter is the hottest new superhero. They can’t print books fast enough before they fly off the shelves. Peggy Carter, also known as Captain America. He’d designed and created her while he was in the Army. He sold her to SHIELD for a position with creative control.

“Yeah she would, let’s do lunch.”

“I’m not doing lunch until you rewrite the bubble,” Steve says and points to the draft.

“Peggy is in a situation where she’s undercover, she has to act like that,” Tony says and stands up from the chair to peer at the bundle of papers Steve holds. Steve refuses to walk around with the tablets everyone else seems to be addicted to these days. Call him old fashioned, but he likes a good pencil and paper any day of the week. 

“She’s undercover but she doesn’t have to be a creep,” Steve says.

“She’s using the vernacular,” Tony replies and smiles. “Come on, there’s a great Shawarma place down at the corner, just opened up. Come on, let’s go out to lunch.”

“That is not the vernacular,” Steve says with a frown, but then again it could be, it isn’t like he’s up on anything these days but Jack and the Neverland Pirates and maybe Phineas and Ferb. 

“Yes, believe me, it is,” Tony says. “Don’t you eat?” He raps Steve with the back of his hand on his bicep. “Come on, you’re almost as big as Thor, you gotta eat sometime.”

“I bring my lunch,” Steve says and doesn’t want to go into his current finances or lack thereof. “It’s healthier.”

“What? Okay, fine, we can go to get rabbit food, because seriously, it looks like all you do is eat lettuce and carrots.” Tony smiles at him and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

Narrowing his eyes, Steve studies him. “Hey, why are you trying to be nice to me?”

“I’m not trying, I am being nice, there’s a difference. Just ask Pepper, she knows everything.” He quirks his eyebrows in a dance that throws Steve off.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Steve says and moves back to his cubicle where he has a number of papers strewn over his drafting table. He tucks the latest panels into his vertical file. Unfortunately, Tony finds it necessary to follow Steve. 

“So with me being nice and all, are you coming to lunch?”

Steve exhales, loudly and obviously. “No, I am not going to lunch. I’m staying right here. I’m eating at my desk and I’m working.”

Tony leans against the cubicle wall. “Yeah I noticed you work through lunch so you can leave early. You shouldn’t leave early, all the fun stuff happens after dark.”

“I’m sure it does,” Steve says and shoves past Tony to get to the common printer. 

“It does, it does,” Tony says undaunted. “We even have a basketball hoop that comes out when Fury and Coulson disappear into the night together. Weird, do you think they’re a couple? Is that possible? I hope not, I’m giving myself the heebie jeebies.”

Steve retrieves his copy from the printer and heads back to his cubby. He hopes that if he ignores Tony, he’ll go away. His hopes do not come true.

“Listen, Cap, you need to get out, strut your stuff-.”

“What, like you told Bruce. Where did that get him? He got arrested in Harlem for disorderly conduct,” Steve says. Bruce couldn’t face anyone for weeks after the event that had something to do with being naked and painted green from head to toe. Someone thinks he was trying to emulate his favorite comic book character. Cosplay taken to whole different level.

“Well, the green part wasn’t my idea,” Tony says. “In my defense that is.”

“But the naked part was?” Steve gawks at Tony. 

Shrugging Tony says, “Everyone has to cut loose now and again. Come on Stevie boy, what do you say? I’m buying.”

“No,” Steve says and his whole body rings with rebellion. He wants to go out, he wants to eat lunch that isn’t a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he wants to hang out with his work fellows. But he’s raising his son alone since his girl died in Afghanistan, he has to be responsible.

“You sure?” Tony gives him a look as if he’s weighing Steve’s answer. 

He bites at his lip and then shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. I have some work to do anyhow for the next issue.”

Tony pauses as if he’s considering whether or not to pursue it. Steve desperately wants him to, because he knows his defenses will break down, he’ll have to say yes to Tony. He wants to say yes to Tony. 

“Okay then, maybe next time?” Tony shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. 

“Maybe next time,” Steve mumbles as Tony nods once and leaves. 

He eats his lunch at his desk, works on his sketches for the next issue and goes home to Ian, his five year old son. It’s worth it, every damned day, it’s worth it. It can be tiring and frustrating, and lonely, but when he puts his little son to bed, he knows it is worth it every day. 

When he goes to work the next day, he doesn’t see Tony at his desk, but that’s nothing new. He’s probably at a writers pow-wow. Later in the morning, he sees Tony hunched over the new intern, Darcy’s desk. He’s flirting and obvious. She’s giving it right back to him. Steve ducks back in his cubby and tries to forget it. Refocus, he tells himself.

Diving into his work, he nearly misses lunch completely except for a light knock on the edge of his cubicle wall. 

“Hey, you up for lunch?” Tony says.

Steve tells himself he’s not relieved that Tony asked him again. “I don-.”

Tony shifts around and two paper bags from the Shawarma place appear. “Thought I’d bring it to you.”

“Oh.”

“Join me?”

Steve smiles and the glint in Tony’s eyes is more than enough to convince him. “Yeah, I think I will.”


	9. Soulmates cannot lie to one another for anonymous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: illness referenced.

Little lies – small lies make life easier, soften the blow, eases the hardness and rawness of life. It never felt right to not lie about these little vulgarities of life, but in the end he had to tell the truth. In some ways his life had been scripted before he even gave thought as to what to say.

And now he must tell the truth. 

Because Tony is his life mate, his lover, his husband, his soulmate. He doesn’t have a choice since that long ago meeting when their souls collided and clashed into a conflagration of light and sound and truths. Truths. 

It breaks him now to think of it and he wishes that they had never been soulmates because this would be so much easier. Little lies are a God sent, are something that are used every day and make life so much easier to take, because life is a difficult process of learning and experiencing and falling down and ignoring defeat. The only way to disregard the pain of life is to lie.

Because life beats and harnesses all hopes and dreams into a net that it holds prisoner. Once in a while the net frays and hope seeps out. Things get better, like when he and Tony admitted defeat, that life and destiny had conquered them, and they fell together into each other’s arms. It became a wonder to be together and with Tony, it became everything he dreamed and wished for, but at the same time it also was a trial.

_Imagine if you could never lie to someone you loved._

He’d said that once to Natasha. Her eyes had been far away like she might be remembering something, but then she clicked back into place, this time and space and had said, “Yes.”

Only yes, but what did it mean? He didn’t ask. Maybe she understood how it felt to try and be untruthful because it was necessary. But he couldn’t be – obfuscating the universal design was like trying to cheat at cards when playing poker with God. It just didn’t happen.

He still feels as if God made the whole soulmate thing as a joke. Some think of it as a trial for true love. Everyone in the world that never finds that one person they cannot lie to, everyone else romanticizes it. There are tomes of poems and books and movies about the long lost love, the soulmate, and finding the one person you cannot lie to. He remembers the glory of finding Tony.

He remembers hurting Tony. The look in his eyes the times when no matter how hard Steve tried he couldn’t get around the truth. From the small things, about colors in the nursery or the large things like Tony was too old to fly the armor anymore. It all hurt. Seeing the pain graze Tony’s expression as harshly as a burn eats Steve alive every day.

He’d been on the receiving end, many times. When Tony finally told him to give the fuck up – Bucky didn’t want Steve to find him. Bucky got lost because he didn’t want anything to do with his former life. Steve had to accept it, move on. He’d been pained and near tears. But that is how these things happened in a life threaded through with soulmate ties.

He grips the edge of the sink, leaning into it as he thinks of all the ways he wishes he could lie to Tony. But he can’t. It will only last that shocking moment, and then the pain of the truth will settle all around them, become their new reality and they will deal with what comes to them as the days turn and their hopes and dreams become ashes.

Straightening, Steve sets his shoulders and leaves the hospital bathroom to walk to Tony’s room. The doctors are waiting outside the room, he’d asked them not to tell Tony. That he wanted to be the one to break the news. It wouldn’t be easy or light or anything. And now, Steve thinks he should have asked them to do it, with their clinical care, their learned compassion. But he can’t do that to Tony. He never could. 

He nods to the doctors, passes them as if on a mission, and enters the darkened room. Even with the drugs, Tony is still in pain and the light hurts his eyes. His fortitude nearly drains out of him when Steve sees Tony lying in the bed and looking so tiny and frail. He isn’t old enough – not yet. 

He bites away his own personal pain and steps to the bed. The machines chirp and beep. There’s a strange and sterile kind of caring in the hospital that Steve loathes. When Tony looks at him, he sees a weariness in those eyes.

Reaching out, he grasps Tony’s hand. It still has the calluses. Even though Tony no longer flies the suit, he still tinkers in the shop. Builds and designs. His inventions have changed the world, made it a better place for all of them. Even after Steve and Tony nearly ruined it all with their clashes and battles along the way. 

World wars have nothing when compared to the horror of soulmates at odds. 

He thumbs Tony’s palm, working up the courage to speak. But it is Tony who whispers, “You don’t have to say anything, Steve.”

Steve holds steady, tries not to let the emotions rage through him, but still he trembles.

“Steve,” Tony says and the gray at his temples and in his beard look like silver in the dim hospital light.

“They can d-.” Steve says. “They tr, tr-.”

Tony pants his hand and shakes his head. “You can’t get around it, sweetie. You never could.”

“No,” Steve says and it is the truth. “They can’t do anything, Tony.”

“I know,” Tony says. 

It must be so obvious to someone with Tony’s intellect.

“God, if anyone, anyone shouldn’t have a brain tum-.”

Tony stretches and pulls Steve to him. “No, don’t. Don’t say it. Don’t make it true.”

Steve nods and he’s breaking, shattering in Tony’s arms. As Tony holds him, carding his hands through Steve’s hair, Steve says over and again. “Not this way, not this way.”

“Shush,” Tony says. “Stay with me, now.”

“I will, I will, always,” Steve says and buries his head in Tony’s shoulder. It is the truth – he will always stay with Tony. After all they have been through, he will stay – to the bitter and horrible end.

“I love you,” Tony says.

“I loved you first,” Steve says and it is the truth. 

“I’ll love you last,” Tony whispers and Steve weeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm going to go sit in the corner now. Sorry.


	10. Thrift Store for tony-stark-nipples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was actually for Steve and Tony undercover at a thrift shop. I took it in a different direction. Partially inspired by the Pilot episode of White Collar, the scene where Neal meets June.

He frowns. From memory, he follows the long blocks through scads of people to cross the street and then turn the corner to find the old O’Malley Thrift Shop that has now been converted to the Yinsen Thrift and Coin Shop. He stops, going to war and coming back again changes things – even the most subtle of things. He needs clothes and this is about all he can afford. Living in New York on an artist’s salary doesn’t get him far.

He pulls the door open, a bell chimes, and he walks in. Immediately, the smells of moth balls mixed with cigarette smoke and old coffee grinds hits him. These he remembers well, whether it’s a Thrift Shop owned by his father’s friends or by the newcomer in the neighborhood, he’ll always recall that rare fragrance – if he can call it a fragrance at all.

In the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday, the shop is empty of customers. The older man behind the counter is a thin rail of a man with a balding head and wire glasses. He looks more like a scholar than a junk dealer. He smiles at Steve by way of greeting and then goes back to studying a small black leather bound book. 

Steve moves off to the men’s section where the clothes smell worse and the floors creak. He follows the racks and shuffles through them. He doesn’t have much at home, but he needs something to wear if he’s going to go out and get a real job. The interview he has tomorrow demands better clothing than jeans and a ripped t-shirt with hoodie. He’d love to earn a living off his painting, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. His rent is due by the end of the week and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to scrounge the money up. He scrubs at his eyes and blinks. He really needs to find something. He can’t be thrown out on the street, especially since Bucky is still in rehab with his arm.

As he mills around the racks looking for something worth a few bucks but masquerading as something more, the bell rings again and someone enters the shop. He hears the shop keeper greet the person as if they know one another and Steve drifts over to the front.

A well-dressed man with sunglasses and wild dark hair leans against the counter. He’s talking to Yinsen and chewing on a lollipop. “I don’t know what Pepper was thinking. Does she think I grew five inches? I mean what the hell?” 

“These are very fine quality, Mister Stark, you should return them to the store they were purchased at and not just give them away.”

Stark? 

Steve blinks a few times. It can’t be Tony Stark. That cannot be Tony Stark. He mutters, “I always thought he was taller.”

“Nah, Pepperpot’s got too much to do and Jarvis isn’t in the mood. I’m fine giving them to you. I’m sure some poor soul could use them.” He chucks the lollipop over the counter and it clinks into the trash can. He smiles at Yinsen. “My luck day.”

Spread out on the counter are several suits and jackets. Steve cannot believe his eyes. They are designer and top of the line. Without even thinking about it, he shoves his way through the racks of rank clothing to appear at the counter. 

“Those are gorgeous.”

Yinsen smiles and says, “Mister Stark is just donating them.”

“Yes, tall, beautiful, and blonde, like what you see?” Stark says and he winks over the rim of his sunglasses at Steve. 

Clearing his throat, Steve mumbles a yes and reaches out to touch the fabric. It’s smooth and wonder under his palm. So unlike army uniforms, so perfect against the skin. He hasn’t worn anything like this in his life. “Wow, how much?”

“I haven’t gone through the stock, yet.” Yinsen says. “Come back day after tomorrow and I will have them out.”

Day after tomorrow won’t cut it for Steve. He has an interview for a job tomorrow – a job he needs to get at a bank. It’s just a teller position, but hell, it will pay some of the damned bills.

“A – is there any way you can sell me one now?”

“What’s the rush, Blondie?” Stark says and he leans his elbow on the counter. He removes his sunglasses and lets them dangle from his fingers.

“If you must know, Mister Stark, I have an interview at Hammer International Bank, I need a good suit.”

Stark snickers. “And you came in here?” He turns to Yinsen. “No offense, old boy.”

Yinsen rolls his eyes but takes it. “None taken, Anthony.”

Stark frowns at the use of his proper name but turns back to Steve. “How about it – you can come back to my place on Fifth Avenue, come by and see what else we have that might fit you.”

“I’d rather just find something here.”

“Yinsen, you got anything drunks and old widowed ladies haven’t dropped off?”

Yinsen hesitates. 

“Come on, Blondie, what do you say? You can appreciate fine clothing, I can appreciate a fine cut of meat. We’d go well together.”

“I think you’re trying to seduce me,” Steve says.

Tony raises an eyebrow and says, “What tipped you off?”

“I think I should leave,” Steve says and then adds to the shopkeeper. “Thanks for your time.” He shouldn’t leave, he has an interview, no clothes and about no hope for getting the job.

As he pushes past Stark though, the man catches his arm and says, “Don’t leave on my account.”

“I’m not,” Steve says but can’t think of a witty comeback to shut Stark up or even to impress him – which is all kinds of wrong and why is Steve thinking that way.

“Okay, then,” Tony says and releases him. He steps to the door before Stark stops him. “Oh if you’re trying to get a job at Hammer International, you’ll need to get rid of the do gooder look, the paint under your fingernails and you might want to dirty that all American boy look as well.”

“What?”

“Hammer isn’t the nicest guy around,” Stark says.

“Some might say the same about you,” Steve replies.

“Come on, you know all about me. My new leaf-.”

“Lots of people know about you and your new leaf, Mister Stark. The question is – is it a real one or a publicity stunt.” Steve looks at the clothes, the clothes he desperately needs but now won’t get. “Looks to me as if it is the latter.”

“Really?” Tony says. He picks up one of the suits, one of the best suits. “Sorry, dear, this one’s not for charity. This one’s for big, blonde, and beautiful.” He dumps it in Steve’s arms. “You want to learn something? You want a real job, one that means something? Come to my Tower at nine, no that’s too early, at eleven tomorrow morning. Because Blondie, you’re hired.”

“You don’t even know my name, my qualifications.”

Tony winks at him, moves past him to the door and says, “Oh but I will. Be there, Beautiful.”

Steve is left with an armful of Armani and heart palpitations. He swears he’s not going to go to the Stark Tower, that ugly building in Manhattan. He swears he’s not going to even think about it.

He swears he’s only going to give Stark a piece of his mind when he shows up precisely at eleven the next day, dressed in a perfectly fitting Armani suit. He swears he’s not falling into the trap of swooning over a genius rich boy. 

A woman with strawberry blonde hair, a perky nose, and a soft smile says to him when he appears at the appointed time. “Mister Stark will see you now.”

And the door to the inner offices opens.


	11. Maple syrup for karadin

“Look at her, she loves it,” Steve says and bends down with his fork – a fork piled high with pancakes dripping with maple syrup.

“Stop that, you cannot feed the dog pancakes every day, Steve,” Tony says and crosses the room ready to snatch the fork from Steve’s grip.

Sitting back up, Steve pouts at Tony – because Captain America can and does pout – he uses it like a secret power or something. Tony knows this intimately and far too well. How many times has he had to bottom because of Steve’s pouty (albeit sexy) expression. He shakes himself – off track – way off track. 

“Bunny loves her pancakes in the morning, doesn’t she?” Steve says in a high pitched voice as he talks to the rotund little Corgi sitting at his feet. She’s a happy dog, or she’s a very happy canine. She’s also very fat.

“We’re only had her two months and I think she’s gained ten pounds,” Tony says. “How are her little legs going to move that belly around.”

“Tony, you’re hurting her feelings,” Steve says and pats Bunny on the head, all the while trying to surreptitiously feed the dog more pancakes dripping with copious amounts of maple syrup. 

“Stop, you really need to stop,” Tony says and does grab the fork out of Steve’s hand, but not before the dog performs something that is positively not within physical or mathematic possibilities by jumping and wrangling the pancakes off the fork. “Hey.”

“She’s hungry.”

“She can’t be hungry, she stole part of Bear’s breakfast this morning. She’s overweight. We have to take her to the vet for her shots in a week and Doctor Marcy is going to yell at us,” Tony says.

In a squeaky voice, Steve says, “No, she won’t, Doctor Marcy loves me.”

Tony rubs at his face. “Stop pretending to be Bunny and making her talk.”

At that moment, their large and old Golden Retriever walks into the room and sits by Steve’s feet. 

In a lower pitched voice and slightly dumber sounding, Steve says, “Aw, Dada, let Bunny have the food. She wuvs the food and I wuv her.”

Tony throws his hands over his face and mutters, “Seriously, you are Captain America, please stop. You cannot channel the dogs. You should not channel the dogs.”

Steve huffs, and then says, “Have you ever wondered if they like us, if they like it here?”

“Of course they like it here, you’re always feeding them.”

“I take them for walks, too, Tony. And I’m serious. What if Bear misses his old owners?”

“He doesn’t miss those dicks who gave him up because he was old,” Tony snaps and then sighs. “Sorry, sorry. Just a touchy subject. Sometimes when I think of him, I get this complex.”

“Complex, what do you mean?” Steve continues to down the pancakes on his plate, using the same fork that he just fed the dog with and he plucked from Tony’s hand. Tony only grimaces.

“Well,” Tony says and is completely distracted by the fact Steve now has dog germs. “Do you do that all the time?”

“Do what?”

“Feed the dog with your fork and then eat with it?”

Steve stuffs the maple syrup sodden pancakes in his mouth. “Yeah, why?”

“Steve, dog germs, dog germs, ew.” Tony says and shivers. “You kiss me with that mouth.”

“I also do a whole lot more with this mouth for you and you don’t seem to mind that at all.”

“But dog germs, Steve.”

“Serum, Tony, doesn’t hurt me.” He shrugs and Tony wonders how many of the dog’s germs are floating around in his system because of Steve. 

“You could transfer them to me.”

“Are you really worried about that, and I think you’re avoiding the subject. Why does Bear and the whole owner thing – what’s up with that?”

Tony drags out a chair, swings it around, and plops down. “It’s just that Dad kind of just gave me away.”

“Not sure what you mean by that, Tony?” Even though Steve’s tone sounds light, he’s focused on Tony, giving him his undivided attention even when Bunny paws him for more pancakes.

“First it was the boarding school, and then when I came back it was Obie. Dad really didn’t want me around. If I’d been Bear, he’d have given me away sooner without any regrets,” Tony says and feels open, exposed, and a little bit pathetic.

Steve leans over and cups Tony’s head in his hand, bringing him closer and tips his forehead against Tony. “You don’t have to worry Tony, I’m never giving you away.”

“That’s what they all say,” Tony says and the pitiful sound to his voice makes him inwardly cringe.

“I’m saying it and that should mean something,” Steve says.

“Not sure if I should believe you, you’re the one who was just making doggy voices and over feeding a too fat Corgi,” Tony says. He’s trying to lighten the mood, but Steve is having none of that.

“You don’t believe me? You don’t believe me, Captain America?” Steve tests him.

“I don- I –I,” Tony says and realizes he has left himself defenseless.

“I think I will have to prove my love to you,” Steve says and reaches over to the maple syrup bottle. “This is fine Vermont Maple Syrup, the real stuff not the high fructose corn syrup.”

“Yes?” Tony feels a little frightened at this non sequitor. 

“There are things you can do with maple syrup that have nothing to do with the kitchen and everything to do with the bedroom.” Steve stands up and draws Tony to his feet as well. “I think I’d like to experiment, find out.”

“I think that’s a little messy, and sticky.” But then again, sticky can be good.

“I think that you should shut up and follow along, because I don’t volunteer every day, you know.”

Tony scoffs. “I heard you volunteered quite a number of times for the Army.”

“Are you being rude? Are you implying something?” Steve says, stopping and quirking an eyebrow at Tony. “When I’m offering up quite a breakfast feast for you?”

“No, no, no,” Tony says and waves his hands as if he’s erasing what he just said. “Don’t think anything of me. All my blood’s in my dick and I can’t think.”

“Well, you better be able to think a little, because you’re going to be in charge of pouring.”

“Wh-what?”

Steve smiles and it is devilish and downright filthy, and Tony cannot believe he was just talking gibberish to the dogs. Tony doesn’t care, all he cares about now is figuring out new and exciting ways to cover Steve’s body in maple syrup and then clean it all off.


	12. Tony spoils Steve for itstheclimb17

The work is over, complete, finished. They have come to a time of Pax Romana in the modern term. The world has heaved and roiled and then settled, quieted and whispered. The waves of human tsumani crashed and flooded, but now the waters recede and dissipate. It is calm, and peaceful.

And for once, the Avengers are not called out to duty. For once, his friend, his companion, his challenger, his lover can breathe without the weight of the world pressing down on Atlas’ shoulders. Instead of building one new invention after another to help him, Tony can finally find time to do what should have been done all those years ago when Steve Rogers first found his way from a heavenless sleep. 

It takes time, like all plans do. The world steps onward, marching and moving forward but at an easier pace. The silence of peace soothes the souls of all the savageness and softens the blows of the past. Tony calls Pepper and works out deals, and strategies. Pepper will be in charge, in more ways than one. At some point during their break up relationship, Tony brought Pepper into the fold and she wore her own armor and championed causes of peace for women the world over. He’s proud of her and a little afraid of her – but then again, he always was.

She agrees to take up his mantle in all the ways he asks, and once again he is in her debt, as always. She only smiles in that perfect way and touches his lips lightly, telling him in her gentle but powerful way to do right by him. And him she means Steve.

Steve hasn’t had a break – he doesn’t get one. Not as the world’s soldier. He might bear the title of Captain America, but Steve Rogers long ago shed that jingoistic moniker if not in actual title than in action. He defends the rights and civil liberties, he leads and suffers because of it. He watches not only the world around him as if he is their sentinel always on duty but also his team mates. 

As a leader Steve doesn’t falter, he plans and commands, but also he cares about every aspect. Somehow Steve never lost sight of the fact that people are more than their title, their label. He doesn’t see Natasha only as an assassin and spy, but he sees her as a woman with a passionate love for ballet and a silly obsession with Pixar movies. He doesn’t see Bruce as a man on the verge of losing himself to a beast waiting at the brink, but also a man who loves to cook and has an infinite interest in calligraphy and writing styles of the world. He sees them all in different fashions.

Tony knows this because Steve understands, comprehends that Tony is not only a billionaire, a showman, a genius, a playboy, an inventor, a tinkerer, and a futurist, he knows this because Tony carries the burdens as well. He heaped them onto his back years ago when he flew a rigged up suit of spare parts out of the terrorist encampment. Steve knows that through the heavy burden Tony carries, through the clutter of the rest, that Tony likes it when it rains. He likes to drink hot cocoa with tiny multi-colored marshmallows, he likes to walk around barefoot and then have Steve massage his feet. Steve knows these little facts and he catalogues them as if they are precious jewels to be remembered always. 

This time, though, instead of having Steve take care of everything and everyone – Tony plans to take care of Steve. He has everything set, the Avengers all agree and it will take only a few pieces on the chessboard shifted to have everything fall into place.

They deserve this time, this time alone, this time to settle the weariness in their bones. This time to be together. He inhales, cleaning all the ache away. This time he’s going to give Steve what he would like, what he would love.

What he so desires.

When Steve walks into his workshop with the tablet Tony gave him clutched in his hands, he smiles. “You need me?” 

“Yeah, yeah I do,” Tony says. He leaves his workbench behind and reaches out to Steve, clasping his hand and tugging him along. “I have something to show you. It’s a surprise.”

“I’m not sure I really like surprises. Bucky gave me one once and I puked for a week,” Steve says.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Tony chuckles but leads Steve into the back corner of the room. “I’ve been working on it for a while. I wanted to give it to you. I’ve always wanted to spoil you. Give you everything you deserve. You spoil us, I wanted to give you what you’ve wanted.”

“Tony, you always spoil me. You’ve given me a place to call home, all these wonderful gadgets, family, I’m spoiled. I don’t need anything else.”

“Except maybe your life back,” Tony says and pulls the sheet off of his surprise.

Steve screws up his face and looks at the contraption. “What is that? It kind of reminds me of the pod, vitaray machine your dad and Doctor Erskine had.”

“Nope, it’s better,” Tony says. “It’s a time machine.”

Steve barks out laughter. “Tony, there’s no such things as time travel. Doctor Hawking said that.”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly what he said. And this is a time machine. Get in.”

“I don’t want to get in,” Steve says.

“You have to get in so that you can go back to the 1940s and hang out with your love,” Tony says and opens the pod. 

“I’m not getting in there,” Steve says. He looks a little frantic around the edges, frayed. 

“Please, I built it just for you,” Tony says and waves at it. “Get in.”

“It doesn’t work.”

“It does if you would get in the damned thing,” Tony says and pats the black cushioned bench. “Come on.”

“I am-.” He regards Tony and throws up his hands. “Fine, okay. But it better not hurt. I don’t see why I have to go back to the 1940s. They boil all their food you know, and I can’t go back and find my love, because you’re it.”

Tony smiles and then straps Steve in. “Ready?”

“Fine, yes,” Steve says and shuffles a little on the bench. 

“Okay, here we go, safe travels.”

Steve rolls his eyes. Tony closes the pod and it begins to lift. “Careful, here’s the dangerous part.” He turns on the dampener so that Steve cannot hear him. “JARVIS, if you would please initiate Spoil Steve protocol.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lights of the workshop dim as Tony goes to the backroom and changes into a dated 1940s tuxedo. By the time he returns there’s an array of holographs spread over the entire room. It mimics a scene from the dance halls of the 1940s with street scenes of New York. Tony wheels in a cart with two delicious meals and candles. The music, Benny Goodman plays and then Tony says, “JARVIS, open the pod.”

The pod opens and Steve blinks as he unbuckles the belt. “Wh-what, what did you do?” He spins around as he sees the past appear before him, as moments captured and recreated by light and shadow. He sees a street in New York City, hears the distant vendors, and paperboys on the corner. It fades to be reimagined as the dance hall as he closes the distance between them. There are dancers around him, swinging to the moods of sweet jazz. It is all surreal and ghostly in its beauty.

“Tony, what did you do?”

“I wanted to give you something, I wanted to spoil you, but I didn’t know how,” Tony says. “I could bring you to a tropical paradise, I could buy you gifts and cars, and everything your heart desires. The one thing I cannot do is to get their long lost look from your face. I can’t ever erase it, so I thought I’d give you a chance to reclaim your past.”

“This is wonderful,” Steve says and his smile shines in the glittering holographs. He bows his head and then looks up at Tony. “You didn’t have to do this for me.”

“I did and I will always.”

“I love it, I adore you, you know that, right?” Steve says and grasps Tony’s hand in his own. “Having you is enough, more than enough. I don’t hunger for these times anymore Tony, I might miss them, but I don’t want them. I want you, you know that right?”

“Do you?”

“Always,” Steve says and his kiss announces everything that Tony wishes for and yearns for. His kiss brings everything to fruition and solidifies and marks who they are and why they are. Steve kisses with his whole intent, his whole soul, and his whole body. It is something that Tony loves about him.

Breaking from the kiss, Tony says, “I would do anything for you.”

Steve places his fingers on Tony’s lips. “Please, don’t say that, only promise you’ll be there.”

“Always.”

“Always.”


	13. Italian for anonymous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story assumes Tony's mother is Italian.

His mother had been Italian. She hadn’t been the classic Italian mother who spent hours in the kitchen building a feast that challenged the grandeur of the ancient Coliseum. No, his mother had no time for the kitchen, though she hired the best cook and relieved Jarvis of those duties since Jarvis had been assigned more nanny type duties since Tony had come along. 

The mothering aspect of Maria grew from her ability to inspire, but not to nurture. She often picked him up as a child and rocked him in the chair she was supposed to nurse him in. But she hadn’t nursed, she didn’t like it. He never held it against her, not really. But on the odd day, she would hold him in her arms, even as he wiggled and giggled as a toddler. She would rock him and sing to him and sometimes in the late night when he couldn’t sleep due to a nightmare, she would tell him stories of the old world. She called it back there, back then.

He loved to hear her stories, he’d listen to her and curl his pudgy little fingers around hers, holding on tightly to keep her from drifting off and away from him. Eventually, his father would come and tell her to stop her foolishness that was what they had servants for, and she would huff, and then put Tony down, leaving him to Jarvis. 

When they died he sank into Aunt Peggy’s arms and cried. He’s not sure what he wept for since his father rarely acknowledged him and his mother had grown more distant the older Tony got. He still longed for those moments in that chair where he could listen to her words, where he glimpsed a bit of who she probably had been as a girl. He wondered if she cherished those memories or if they’d been tossed to the side. Aunt Peggy held him and told him of course she remembered, of course she cared.

He knew it wasn’t true, Peggy Carter couldn’t lie to him to save her life. Her mouth always twitched ever so slightly when she fibbed. Jarvis would tug on his ear and she’d slightly frown. It was easy to catch if you knew what to look for. Still, he held the memories close and wanted them to mean something someday.

He wanted to build on his mother’s memories, he wanted them to be the foundation for something more. He lost his way at some point. After his parents’ deaths, he become the sole heir to the Stark fortune and his life exploded before him. Little dreams became inconsequential and he rushed forward without a care. He slept his way through countries and laughed at the politicians and business partners who threw money at him and compliments as if they were nothing.

And it was all nothing. 

He found that out in the cold truth of a cave and a shot to the heart. Life changed then but it wasn’t any slower, he never learned to slow down and find out what his joy was. He never took the time to settle into his roots, into his memories to flesh them out and develop them. 

Until now.

It took a life in shambles and death to bring him to this point. It took harsh truths thrown up in his face and burning pain to bring him to understand that instead of putting off life, he needed to stop life and hold onto the essentials. He needed to tell himself the truth and realize what he needed and admit it to himself.

He needed to open up and say the right words.

And he had.

And it had been a night that had been cold and useless and no one else had been there except for Steve. He’d simply said _I love you_

Steve had looked up from the book he’d been reading and, actually scanned the room to find out who Tony had been speaking to. When he found no one else around he furrowed his brow and asked Tony if he was okay.

He’d only repeated it.

It took some time for Steve to believe him, it took more time still for them to actually come together. Then he found time to re-imagine life and decided it might be time to shift through old memories and find what enchantments might be found back there, back then.

Back there, back then, drew him to this villa, this strange and beautiful house in Tuscany with Steve at his side. Together they came and together they searched and enjoyed. 

Now, he’s drifting in and out of sleep for the past few minutes, dozing really, trying to ignore the persistence of the sun. He’s been thinking of the past years, thinking of his mother and what he lost – and how he lost it years before she died. He reaches over to Steve’s side of the bed, and finds it empty. Peeling an eye open, he searches the room – in a house he thinks his mother might have liked. The doors to the small balcony are open and the Italian country side of Tuscany are verdant and lovely to see in the early morning light.

His view is partially blocked by a figure, Steve is standing there, bare chested and lovely in white sleeping pants, slung low, showing off his impossibly narrow waist. Steve turns and his face is in silhouette because of the eastern sun lighting him from behind. “You’re awake.”

“Hmm,” he says it is all he can manage. He’s tired and Steve is too far away. He lifts a hand to tell him to come back. 

Steve chuckles and strolls – he strolls across the floor as the light catches his hair and highlights it to gold. Standing out of Tony’s reach, Steve stops and studies him. “What?”

Tony stretches out his hands and opens and closes them several times. “Come here.”

“You’re not doing grabby hands at me, are you?”

Tony whines a little and continues his grabby hands. “Come here.”

Steve stays just out of reach. “Tony?”

“Stop, just come to me.”

Tilting his head, Steve considers Tony’s request. “What’s going on? You’ve seemed a bit maudlin since we arrived. This is supposed to be our honeymoon.”

Tony drops his hands and releases a breath. “Okay, I’ll tell you but only if you come here.”

“That’s how it is?”

Rolling his eyes, Tony admits, “Yeah, that’s how it is.”

“I don’t know how Bruce puts up with you in lab,” Steve says as he climbs into the bed. His muscles undulate and, for a moment, Tony weighs trying to distract Steve with some seductive moves of his own. He disregards the thought when Steve settles next to him and quirks a ‘Captain America’ brow at him. “Well?”

“Okay, okay,” Tony says with a shrug. “I picked Italy because I thought it would be a good place to reconnect to my roots, to feel closer to my mom.”

Steve waits, he doesn’t test Tony on this and, for that, Tony’s grateful.

“We-she- I didn’t have a lot in common with my mom. She loved art and society and stuff. Sometimes I think she would have been happier if I’d been a different person.”

“A girl?”

“That’s sexist, Steve.”

Steve clasps his hand and squeezes it, not taking offense. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, someone to share her life experiences with, I wasn’t that person and neither was Howard. She was a trophy wife, young and vibrant, someone to give him an heir when he got old enough to care about his legacy,” Tony says. “All I ever cared about was pleasing him. I didn’t worry about mom. She was always in the background.”

“I think coming to Italy for that reason was a great idea.”

“Yeah, I saw how much of a great idea it was when you couldn’t speak at the World War II memorial we went to the other day,” Tony says and yanks his hand away so that he can scrub at his face. “That’s great, bring your husband on a honeymoon to make him cry.”

Steve gathers him up in his arms – as Steve would do because – he’s Steve. “I love it here, I love the people, the places, I love even the ghosts here. Tony, I love it and it’s part of me and part of you, can’t you see that? I love you.”

Tony relaxes into Steve’s embrace, feels the ease of how they fit together. Maybe it was time to surrender his thoughts of inadequacy about his relationship with his parents, his mother, maybe it was time to focus on the future, on Steve. After all, Steve had to give up all of his past, and he’s welcomed the future, invited the future, asked Tony for his hand in marriage. He’s stepped forward.

Tony thinks he can do the same.

Steve kisses him with light feathery touches, his eyelids low, his breathing heavy. “I love Italian.”

Tony grins. “I’m a little partial to Irish myself.”

They both burst out giggling and it turns into full laughter that feels good and cleansing and it weaves them together.

Tony clutches Steve to his chest, cradling him there, and says, “We’re hopeless.”

Steve laughs, licks a nice and sensual stripe up Tony’s chest, teasing a nipple. “Hmm, but I still like Italian.”

“Well, maybe it’s time for some Italian, then.”

And Steve rolls on top of him and the sun shines around him, and Tony forgets to judge himself, and luxuriates in Steve’s arms.


	14. Tony builds a pillow fort that he keeps secret - Stony cuddling for rendingrosencrantz

“He shouldn’t be upset.”

Bruce scrunches up his face as if the thought of Steve telling him something so obvious might just trigger an appearance by the other guy. 

“He shouldn’t,” Steve insists but now that face is making him doubt things, everything. His relationship with Tony is new enough, they’ve only just taken it up a level, and Tony’s been nothing but solicitous in every regard. Steve cannot understand this new issue. 

Bruce studies him, seriously studies him moving his eyes up and down as if he’s taking in every detail from his haircut to his t-shirt to his currently wrapped in a cast right calf. His gaze lingers on the cast. 

“It’s nothing, I heal quickly. I won’t have the cast on for more than a week. Most adults would have it on for months,” Steve says.

“Considering you smashed the bones to bits,” Bruce says and screws up his mouth like he tasted something he doesn’t like.

“Yeah, so?” Steve says. He’s been injured before, it isn’t like he can’t deal with it. So he has a cast on for the next week or so. It’s not really that painful and he can deal with thumping around with his crutches. 

“He feels guilty, Steve,” Bruce says and exhales like he’s tired of dealing with the children that make up the sum total of the Avengers. He might be right.

“He shouldn’t. It’s not like I gave him much of a heads up, and I’ve jumped from that height before with just the shield-.”

“Not when someone was actively shooting at you and you had to use the shield to make sure you weren’t shot in the head.” Bruce leans against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes critical. 

“Okay, so that part made the whole jumping a little more difficult. I survived.”

“You’re lucky, you didn’t see him the moments after he realized he wasn’t going to make it to you in time,” Bruce says. “Even the other guy was horrified.”

“Plus, my good Captain, you caused quite a stir. There were many of your fellow warriors who became distracted and weighed whether or not they should come to your aid or complete their assignments,” Thor says as he ambles into the kitchen.

Steve bows his head and sighs. Maybe they’re right, maybe he was a little reckless. “It still isn’t Tony’s fault. He has nothing to be guilty about. I shouldn’t have jumped.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Natasha says – she’s behind Thor. Steve starts to wonder if Clint might be in the vents again. 

He holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine, I’ll go and talk with Tony, but still, it’s my fault.”

“Damn right.” The words echo in the shaft of the air vents.

Rolling his eyes, Steve grabs his crutches and makes his way to the elevator. “JARVIS, can you tell me where Tony is?”

“Sir happens to be in his bedroom and has asked not to be disturbed.”

Steve considers JARVIS’ information and asks, “Are you telling me this because you think he should be disturbed.”

“I would say it would be the correct assumption on your part, Captain Rogers.”

“Thank you, JARVIS, I’m on my way,” Steve says and the elevator doors open. He marches inside and the lift’s doors close.

“And may I say, Captain that I do believe it is good that you have taken on the responsibility for your own reckless act.”

Steve closes his eyes, now hot shot computers are berating his heroing choices. “Yes, thank you, JARVIS.”

“Happy to be at your service, Captain.”

He arrives at the penthouse and continues toward the bedroom. He feels a little like an intruder, although he’s spent a good amount of time on this floor of late. He’s even spent many a wonderful evening or two in the bedroom. 

When he arrives at the appointed room, he taps lightly on the door, using the shoulder pad of the crutch. 

A muffled voice. “Go away.”

“Tony?” Steve says.

“Steve?” There’s a rustling and then a loud clatter, and finally the door swings open. Tony’s in his silk pajamas and his hair is standing up at all angles. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing, I haven’t seen you all day, since I came back from medica-.” He pushes the door open to reveal the grandest, largest pillow fort he may have ever seen – make that – ever seen in his entire life. It reaches up to the ceiling. The construction is monumental and could only be created by an ace class engineer with a degree or two from MIT. 

Tony tugs on the door, trying to close it. “What, is there a problem? Are you not feeling well? Do we need to bring you back to medical?”

Steve shoves the door open and can see through the many pillows acting like bricks of the castle, a soft glowing light in the center. “What is- Tony, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, nothing, just figuring out some calculations. I do better with three dimension-.”

Steve pushes his way inside, which is easy considering the fact that Tony’s nothing but concerned and worried about his injury. Steve did not just take advantage of that concern. “What have you built? This is what you’ve been doing? Where did you get all the pillows?”

“Stored, I keep them stored for special occasions,” Tony says and rubs at the back of his neck. “Can you leave?”

“Leave,” Steve says and thinks what he’s seeing is miraculous. How can anyone build a pillow fort with such beauty? It’s better than the greatest palaces of Europe. It takes up more than seventy percent of the room. He doesn’t want to leave. “Do I have to?”

Tony stops what he’s about to say. “I – what?”a

“Can I stay, this is fabulous.”

“I don’t, why do you want to stay?” Tony says and avoids looking at Steve. “This is embarrassing, Steve. I don’t think-.”

“It’s beautiful, can I go in?” Steve places the crutches against the wall, and limps over to the fort. “Please?”

Tony throws up his hands in surrender. “Sure, why not, see what the big guy with the suit does when he’s fucked up.”

Steve goes into the fort, but he needs to crawl in. It isn’t easy with the cast, but he manages. In the middle of the castle fort is Tony’s bed, heaped high with more pillows and cushions. There’s a television and a tablet and a lantern. The television is playing _The Fellowship of the Ring_. “Wow.”

Tony sidles up next to him. “You like it?”

“Yes, it’s amazing,” Steve says. “How could I not like it, it’s you.”

“You said that about the arc reactor, too,” Tony says and lays against the pillows as Steve finds a comfort place notched next to Tony. 

“True, that’s because I love you,” Steve says. 

“I-I,” Tony says and works at the blankets tossed around them. “I do this when I’m upset. I suppose you should know. I like to get away, from everyone. It helps my mind to stop. To get the worm out of my head. I build and then I sit for a while and watch some movies. And then I smash it all down.”

“It’s a good therapy,” Steve says. “I used to have this little book that I drew in during the war. I would draw all kinds of things from the Howling Commandoes to the villages and cities. It helped me to deal with what I saw.”

“But that’s normal, this is a grown man building a pillow fort and hiding inside of it.”

“What makes it not normal?” Steve shakes his head. “We live in a not normal time. We have robots and aliens and who knows what else attacking all the time. I think you get a free pass to build a fort and hide away for a little while.”

Tony nods. “That’s actually comforting.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Being a soldier, I thought you’d say buck up and fly straight.”

“Well, we all know you can’t fly straight.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” 

Steve laughs. “Obviously a poor joke, too soon?”

Tony wraps his arms around Steve. “Way too soon, darling.”

Steve settles against Tony. “So are we watching the entire trilogy?”

“I would think,” Tony says.

“Good, that sounds great.” 

Tony kisses the top of his head and says, “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Never,” Steve whispers.

“Love you.”

“Love you right back, Shellhead.”


	15. Tony surprises Steve with original art work for coffee-and-stony

He tries not to worry when Tony doesn’t come out of the workshop for a week. Or when Bruce does come out of the workshop with burns on his hands and has to go to Medical for some treatment before the other guy decides to make an appearance. Hawkeye gets called into the workshop at one point and spends a good five hours in there while sparks jump and glitter through the frosted glass. 

When Steve appears at the workshop determined to gain entrance either Sam or Natasha is there, escorting him away, distracting him. He’s not a complete novice at this stuff and he doesn’t particularly enjoy the fact that everyone seems to be in on what Tony’s got cooking in the workshop except for him.

Sam brings him to a coffee shop and orders some outlandish coffees with long names and too sweet tastes as Natasha purchases food that might have been designed to feed wild elks at one time. It doesn’t matter, a long time ago, his mother taught him to eat whatever was put in front of him and be thankful for it. He does, even though some of it sticks like twigs in his teeth. Granted, he likes that not everything is boiled in the future, but it would be nice if he recognized some of the ingredients. 

Sam and Natasha chat away trying to divert him and he only mutters replies. Besides, it is obvious Sam has a thing for Natasha, and he still trying to woe her. Steve thinks it is dangerous not only because Natasha has been known to break men twice her size in half, but also because Hawkeye is a good shot and the other guy seems sweet on her, too. They need more X chromosomes on the team. Perhaps he should talk to Sharon about the team. He wishes he could talk to Peggy about it, she would have been a great member of the team. Maybe Tony’s building a time machine, maybe he can go back and get her, but he supposes that would be wrong considering the fact that she has kids and what would that do to their existence if she was snatched to the future before she had a chance to have them and raise them?

Fingers clicking in front of his face snap him out of it. “Hey, man, what’s going on there? You’re not going to go a little Captain America on me now are you?”

Steve frowns and shakes his head. “Nope, just considering.”

“Considering?

“Possibilities.”

“Now you sound like Stark and Banner,” Natasha says and takes a sip of her coffee with its foamy top. It leaves a little bubbly froth on her lip that she licks off and Sam ogles as she does. Steve only rolls his eyes.

“I noticed, you know.”

Both Sam and Natasha look at him like he just announced he’s pregnant or some other insanity.

“Everyone’s keeping me away from the workshop. That can only mean one thing,” Steve says. 

Again both Sam and Natasha stare at him like he’s not only announced he’s pregnant but with an alien’s child. 

“Tony’s in trouble again, isn’t he? He’s building some kind of awful suit that will lead to all kinds of personal pain on his part,” Steve says. “I should be in there, talking him down. I’m the leader of this team, and I also happen to be his boyfriend, but no one seems to care. I should be in there taking care of this situation. You should not be catering to his whims.”

“Well, maybe, if you didn’t think his inventions are whims-.”

“I don’t. He’s fantastic but he also has a tendency to go into a self-sacrificing mode. He doesn’t have to sacrifice himself for the sake of the team,” Steve says and he’s serious, he’s earnest, he’s also the worried boyfriend. He hates when Tony takes something and believes his worth is only measured in his ability to invent something for the team. “He’s important.” Steve says this in a small voice and looks down at his boring black coffee. 

Natasha grasps his arm and says, “We know. He’s perfectly fine. Bruce is making sure he eats and sleeps.”

“Away from me,” Steve says and thinks maybe the last time they were out was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Tony might think Steve is too old fashioned, that holding the door open and pulling out a chair is too feminizing for him and he hates it. “I don’t know how to act.” 

“What’s that?”

“I was never good at dating,” Steve says and squeezes the paper cup with the coffee in it. “I didn’t really date when I was, you know, smaller. I tried a bit with the girls from the USO tour after, but that was a disaster.” He rubs at the furrow between his brows because he knows that’s showing. “I haven’t done good, have I? And now, Tony’s accommodating, right that’s the right word. He’s building lots of suits and feeling horrible because I treated him like a lady-.”

Natasha grabs his arm this time and twists him around. “What?”

“I treated him too girly?”

“Man, what does that even mean?” Sam asks and this time he rolls his eyes.

“I – you know –I asked him out, I opened the door for him, pulled out the chair, insisted on paying the bill. And wow, that was one expensive restaurant he picked-.”

“How is that treating him like a girl?” Natasha says, and her eyes are the color of her hair, he swears it.

“I- well, you do that for a dame- lady, I don’t know-.”

“Seriously, dude, you do that for someone you like regardless.” Sam shakes his head. “You like guys, right?”

“Yeah, right?”

“You asked him out, you should show you care, regardless of lady or dude or trans or etc.”

Steve covers his face with his hands and says a muffled. “I just wanted him to be happy.” He drops his hands. “And I thought he was. He looked kind of charmed by the whole thing.”

“And I’m sure he was,” Natasha says and her eyes are settled away from burning red. “Stark likes you, a lot.”

“But he won’t see him, not since our last date.”

“What’s today’s date, Steve?”

“Fourteenth.”

“Of?” Natasha prods.

“February, oh it’s Valentine’s – and I didn’t get-.”

Natasha pats his arm and winks at Sam. “See, you can show you’re a thoughtless idiot too.”

“Great, now he’ll really hate me,” Steve says. “He’ll probably stay in there forever and build an army of killer robots or something.” Sam starts to stand up as does Natasha. Both of them are abandoning him in his hour of need. “Wait, you have to stay and help me.”

“I think you’re on your own, tiger,” Natasha says and threads her arm through Sam’s – who’s especially happy about it.

“Great, thanks for all the dating advice, Nat.”

She only pecks him on the cheek and then they leave. Now Steve needs a gift and he needs one fast. So he spends the next three hours hunting for something that will mean something. And finds – nothing. He doesn’t want to give flowers because everyone does that, and there’s not a rose in New York to be found. The chocolate thing is out, how can he just bring a box of chocolate to, Tony. He doesn’t think a diamond ring will work, because they’ve only just started dating. 

By the time he turns the corner and is about to enter the Tower, it’s pouring and he’s had enough. The team doesn’t listen to him, his boyfriend hasn’t seen him in a week since their date, and he doesn’t have a gift for Valentine’s. Plus, it’s pouring, cold, icy rain. Just what he loves. 

He enters the Tower through the back entrance, into the parking garage and hears a tiny almost imperceptible mewling. He searches the surrounding area and finds the tiniest black kitten he’s ever seen. It’s small enough to fit in his hand. It’s also shivering.

Peering outside, he sees the rain is turning into sleet. He tucks the kitten in his coat, zips up and enters the elevator. He asks for the penthouse floor. 

“Sir, is waiting for you in the penthouse, Captain Rogers.”

“Thank you,” Steve says and thinks about how Tony’s probably going to break up their nascent relationship. At least he has the little kitty to worry about, it will take his mind off of things. 

When he steps out of the elevator car, he walks into the penthouse and stops. In front of him is a mural – large and beautiful – three dimensional in effect. It’s probably the most beautiful thing that Steve’s ever seen. It is a mural made out of metal alloy depicting people from Steve’s life – his mother, Bucky, Peggy, even Doctor Erskine and Howard. It must be at least eight feet tall and ten feet wide. The metal glimmers with different shades and lights. 

“What is this?” Steve says and Tony appears from behind the mural.

“You like?”

“It’s gorgeous, where – did you make this?”

Tony smiles. “I wanted to give you a piece of art for Valentine’s. And Pepper said the best art is something you make yourself. So I holed up in the workshop and voila!”

“It’s wonderful,” Steve says and walks around it. The three dimensionality is truly amazing because as he circles it the scene changes. “This is spectacular.”

“I wanted to show you how much I appreciate you. How you treat me-.”

“How I treat you?” Steve says and his heart sinks further. He has nothing for Valentine’s Day for Tony.

“You treat me with respect, you want to know how many of my dates have ever done that outside of Pepper? None, until you.” Tony sidles up to Steve. “You treat me like I matter, like I’m more than money and a guy in a suit of armor.”

Steve blushes at that one. They tease one another a lot about their first battle. “I don’t know what to say, Tony.”

“Say you’ll have dinner with me and stay with me forever.”

Steve leans down and kisses Tony, bringing him close. As he does a little meow breaks them up. “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” He cups the little fur ball and plucks the cat out of his pocket. “This little guy-.”

“He’s so sweet,” Tony says and grabs him, cuddling him. “He’s got the bluest eyes. So cute.” Tony rubs his face on the purring kitten. “I’ll admit, I don’t think I ever thought about having a pet, but he’s perfect, Steve.”

Flabbergasted, Steve shrugs but comes clean. “I didn’t exactly have anything for you, Tony. I forgot.”

“But you have this little guy,” Tony says and snuggles with the kitten.

“But I forgot,” Steve reminds him.

Tony chuckles. “Even when you’ve been a louse, you’re honest and perfect.” 

Steve stutters and can’t think of a reply. He turns to the epic and beautiful creation. “Thank you, Tony.”

Tony leans back against Steve, holding the cat and then wrapping an arm around Steve. “I think this is the best Valentine’s ever.” The kitten agrees with a low purr.

“With you, it is.”


	16. Electro swing for roachalk

He peers into the studio and sees the keyboard and a violin case propped against it. There are a few scattered chairs, nowhere to hold music at all. Mainly the room is bare. The scuffs indent the floorboards and when a man walks across them, Tony can hear the yawns and groans of the old building in Brooklyn. 

He doesn’t know why he’s answering the advertisement he saw on Craig’s list. Probably a stupid thing to do. But he needs the gig and it seemed legit after he emailed the poster several times. He tested the poster in the correspondence and everything the man knew about music was on the up and up. The window of the door only allows him a limited view of the studio, but he can see a single man. Who can’t be a musician because he is fucking huge. He wears t-shirt but his arms are bare and the muscles in his back undulate. What musician looks like that? Tony must be too late.

He peeks at his watch. No, for once he’s right on time. Leaning his instrument case against the wall, he taps on the door. The man glances behind him and nods. As he pockets something, he walks across the empty space and opens the door.

“Hey?”

“Yeah, I’m here for the audition?”

The man quirks an eyebrow at him, shrugs, and waves him in. Tony’s not sure about the place and he doesn’t want to leave his instrument in the hallway, but he sure the hell doesn’t want to drag it in and set up if this dude can’t even say more than hey to him. 

“Are you Steve?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says and waves at the gray metal folding chair. “Take a seat.” He takes the time, finally, to really look at Tony. He mustn’t like what he sees because he grimaces and says, “You do have your own instrument, right?”

“Yes,” Tony answers. This guy is rubbing him the wrong way. 

“A bass, not a bass guitar, this isn’t a rock band,” Steve says and frowns while he crosses his arms over his chest.

“Yes, it’s in the hallway.”

“Good place to get it swiped,” Steve replies and relaxes. “Get your gear and set up. I’ll be right back.”

Tony shrugs. He needs the gig, he’s almost out of money. He goes into the hallway, and picks up the large instrument case that’s on wheels but he mainly carries it when he can. He’s lucky he doesn’t get mugged five times a day considering it’s nearly his height and it weighs a freaking ton. 

It only takes him about ten minutes to set up. Since there’s no music stands, he decides to go without the music. He has all of his pieces memorized anyway. He scans the studio. It is practically bare. There’s an old ratty couch in the corner near the block of windows. A microwave perched precariously on the windowsill and a tray table next to it with dirty dishes. This is the corner studio and the sun light streams in through the line of windows on front and side of the building. 

Steve enters again, but from a door to the side. The studio looks like it must have an inner office. He walks over with a cigarette hanging from his hand. He props it in his mouth and says, “I’ll play the keyboards for you.”

“You smoke?” Tony cannot say why he’s taken aback by the sight of Adonis smoking but somehow it just doesn’t sit right. It is a tobacco cigarette, it isn’t even weed for God’s sake.

Steve takes a puff and it blows it out of his nose. “Yeah, hmm.” He crushes it out in an ashtray on the windowsill. “Sorry, trying to quit. Bad habit I picked up in the army.”

“You were in the army?”

“Yeah,” Steve says and a shadow passes over his features. “Two tours in Iraq, two in Afghanistan, and one I’m not allowed to talk about. Smoking is the least of my worries.” 

For the first time, Tony notices he’s bare foot and his jeans are frayed. He wonders if he’s one of those Vets with nightmares and flashbacks. “Hmm, sorry, didn’t mean to bring it up.”

Steve waves him off. “Don’t worry about it.” He settles at the keyboard. 

Tony stands with the bass. He hasn’t picked up his bow. After a long moment, Tony says, “You okay?”

Steve, who sat still at the keyboard, nods. “Yeah, good.” He rubs at his arm and Tony sees scarring up and down the muscle of his arm that disappears under his t-shirt along his back. “We ready?”

“Yeah, sure, what do you want to play?”

“I just thought we’d jam. See how loose you could be with the bass. You gonna pluck it?”

“Yeah, no need to use the bow, if we just jam for now.” Tony gets ready. “Just tell me the key.”

“Let’s start with G sharp.” Steve turns on the keyboard and adjusts it to his liking. He taps out a beat with his bare heel until Tony’s bobbing his head to it and then he begins. He plays loose and free. As he does he brings in different sounds and effects along the keyboard. Tony jumps in plucking, bringing not only a bass beat to the swing of the music but also he finds himself providing a bit of the melody. A lot of keyboardist wouldn’t like that, but Steve encourages it with a smile that lights up the room.

The music opens up as Steve brings in more electric instruments from his board and Tony takes over the melody completely. He’s finding his way and losing himself in the crescendos and rests in the music as Steve counterpoints him perfectly. It feels almost natural how they fit together with just these two instruments. He thinks he’s been missing something with the other bands he’s been playing with for the last few years. This is true synergy as they move through the music and notes.

He could play forever but he can’t and there’s a time and place for everything. He brings it to a satisfying conclusion and Steve finishes off with him, perfectly. Steve splays out his hands and then claps, his smile draws Tony, it’s brilliant like his music.

“Wow, that was great, Tony,” Steve says. He stands up. “I mean that was as good as Tony Maroni.”

“Thanks, thanks. I – My mom used to own the Maria Stark Music Foundation.”

“That was your mom?” Steve says. “Damn, I’m sorry. I heard Hammer really screwed up the Foundation drove it right into the ground, lost its assets and its credibility.”

“Yeah, shitty,” Tony says. It wasn’t only Hammer. Stane had a good hand in it too, after Tony’s parents died. But Stane got away with it, but Hammer ended up in prison. Unfortunately, the Foundation was in ruins and all of Tony’s inheritance gone. 

“Anyhow,” Steve says as he smiles. “That was fantastic. You play the bass, anything else?”

“I do pretty good on the keyboard, the French horn, and the guitar, too. A little here and there with some other instruments.”

“Phenomenal.” Steve goes to the inner office and comes back with a piece of paper. “We got some dates to play.”

“We?”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve says. “We – the whole band – we’re the Avengers. They usually have me do the auditions because, shit, we get a lot of crappy people come by and Natasha does not have the patience.”

“Oh,” Tony says. “Yeah, sounds like my friend Bruce.”

“We have Natasha on vocal or keyboards, Clint scratches for us and does whatever mixing on the fly. He’s amazing. Feels the music. We have Thor- don’t ask about the name – on the drums, percussion instruments. And Sam on the horn, clarinet, all kinds of things that blow.”

Tony laughs. “Okay, you need me on bass then?”

“Mainly, but you’ll find your groove and whatever we need you find what you want to do. That’s how we run it,” Steve says.

“And you?” Tony asks. “What do you play, the keyboard?”

Steve smiles. “Keyboard, vocals, sometimes some strings.” He points to the violin. “Not much on the strings anymore though.” There’s something wistful, but hopeful in Steve’s tone. He jolts out of his melancholy as quickly as he fell into it. “Well, Tony, welcome to the Avengers.” He offers his hand.

Tony grasps it. “Seems like the start of a beautiful relationship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> author knows nothing (or only a dangerously small) amount about music.


	17. Clockwork for wanderingrivers

He likes it hidden, down deep. It’s quiet and soft and no one can see him. Here, he’s safe. With the stacks of books, and the computers, old and ancient, as walls and cubbies around him. He stays in the basement. Here it is safe and no one can see him. Yet, he does venture up the stairs. On the rare occasion the bell rings he climbs the steps into the light of the world and faces what he hates. 

He hate them. The people, they come at him in crowds, they always did. There were always too many of them. When he was young his father would show him off to the world as if he was one of this father’s creations. He’d have to stand and show everyone what he knew. Recite pi to the hundredth digit, or do calculus in his head as if he was a trained monkey at the circus. If he failed at anything, his father would smack him upside the head as soon as they were far away from prying eyes. 

He still doesn’t like the spotlight. Not anymore. He tried, he pretended. He numbed his whole body and mind in the heat of the paparazzi. He drank it up as he drown in booze. He became what they wanted and defined himself by their attention. It was the only love he knew.

But then Afghanistan came and went. He escaped and hid within the shell of a metal man. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bright. It broke him down to his rarest parts, to the elements of his existence. Once he came back to the State, he said his goodbyes and promptly disappeared.

And here he lives in this little house in the middle of Main Street in a town that has no names and no signal lights. He owns a little store. People from all over the county come to his store to get mechanical things fixed. Once or twice a week the bell rings and he ventures upstairs to the shop, that’s tiny and cramped and filled with clocks, ticking away the hours of his life. He likes the clocks, he collects them because they represent the time that’s been lost and he’s trying to find.

People ask him to fix things from clocks to computers and he does the job, and barely charges them at all.

Until one day, the bell rings and a man is standing in his shop. He has on what Tony would call old man clothes, but who is Tony to judge. Tony wears torn jeans, a long sleeved stained t-shirt and fingerless gloves that Fagin might have worn when Dickens described him. 

The man is standing with his back to the counter, staring out at the little street. When he turns Tony notices a distant look to his eyes and an equally distressing grimace to his expression. 

Tony hates to talk first. He barely speaks most of the time. His customers, the ones from around here, now know to just tell him what needs to be done and then leave. This man is new, he waits and turns when he hears Tony scuffling behind the old wooden counter.

For a long moment, they stare at one another. Something about the man seems familiar and for one terrifying second, Tony thinks he’s come to take him back to that life, that horrible life.

Then the man speaks, “Do you, can you fix a motorcycle. There’s no station in town.”

“No, there isn’t.” 

The man waits and then smiles. “Can you do it? Do you know anyone who can? Or where’s the nearest service station?”

“Thirty miles to the next mechanic, five to the next gas station.”

“Oh damn,” The man says and hangs his head. He takes out a phone and starts to fiddle with it. “Damn, how do I- damn.” His hands tremble and he looks like he’s about to drop the phone.

“I can fix the bike.”

The man looks up and the smile rings true this time. It doesn’t touch his eyes. “Oh, that’s great, thank you.”

Tony opens the counter and walks out. “Where is it?”

The man jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Out front.”

Tony nods and sidles around the man to go and inspect the bike. The man follows him. “”Rogers, Steve Rogers, sir.”

The name doesn’t startle him – but it conjures an odd sensation as if he should know it. It creeps into his mind like an intruding roach. “Steve Rogers like Captain America.” Tony opens the door and finds the bike in the front of the shop.

“Yeah, exactly.”

Tony’s not sure how to interpret his answer, but since Captain America has been dead in the ocean all these many years, he assumes the guy’s mother or father had some weird ass fetish over the Captain. He checks out the bike and finds that it’s a simple repair that will only take a little over an hour.

“Thank you, sir,” Steve says. “Is there somewhere I could go to get something to eat?”

“Marcy’s down the block has food.”

Steve bobs his head up and down and salutes him before he leaves. It takes Tony approximately fifteen minutes to realize the bike has been rigged to look like it was broken. He weighs his options but decides not to confess that he knows Steve or whomever he is may be up to something.

When Steve returns, Tony says, “The bike has major issues with the fuel line. Very touchy. Could ignite.”

Steve looks genuinely surprised. “Really? I didn’t think-.”

“No, you didn’t.” Tony waves him away. “It’s going to need a rebuild.”

“For a fuel line issue?”

“That’s only the beginning, there are carburetor issues, your brakes suck, and don’t get me started on the ignition-.”

Steve sighs and glances around as if he’s waiting for someone to tell him what the next step in his evil plan might be. He shrugs. “Fine, how long will it take?”

“A week, maybe more.”

“Okay, anywhere for me to stay around here?”

“Marcy has a few rooms for rent.”

Steve nods. “Oh and you never told me your name.”

“No, I didn’t.” He goes back into his shop and before Steve can follow him he flips the card to closed and draws the shade. 

It starts a routine then, every day like clockwork, Steve appears at his shop for an update. Tony gives him a bogus list of things he’s doing to the bike that he moved to the back lot. Steve listens patiently, and then hangs out in the shop for a few hours until it’s lunch time. It’s a little aggravating because Tony then has to pretend to actually fix the not broken bike. 

By the third day Tony expects Steve at quarter past nine in the morning, and he appears. He has a paper bag today that he deposits on the counter for Tony.

“I brought you something to eat.”

“I don’t need anything to eat.”

“Yes you do.”

Tony eats it, just to spite him (and because he is a little hungry). 

By the tenth day, Tony is wondering why Steve hasn’t asked about the bike in two days. Steve waits it out and reads the paper. Every now and again, he takes out his smartphone, but when he does his hand quakes so much he can’t use it. He stuffs it back in his pocket.

It is the sixteenth day when Steve doesn’t disappear at lunch time. He hangs out and watches at Tony works on something for Doctor Davison the town doctor. He leaves only to fetch some lunch for them and when Tony takes a break they sit amicably at the counter and eat.

That’s when the phone vibrates. Steve ignores it. He always does. Whenever it makes noise, he ignores it. He stares at the little clocks ticking off the time in the little shop instead.

“Your phone.”

“Hmm?”

“Your phone, you have a call,” Tony says and taps Steve’s breastpocket of his jacket.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Ignoring the misses?”

Steve only smiles and there’s pain in his eyes. Tony backs away from it. 

It’s the twentieth day when Tony finally breaks. He cannot stand it any longer. Steve is too nice to him, he’s not forcing Tony back, but he’s there always looking at Tony in an odd almost painful way.

“What are you doing?” Tony yells when Steve enters the shop like he always does, like fucking clockwork.

“I’m just-.”

“No, why the hell are you here? There’s nothing fucking wrong with your bike. It’s fine. You’ve been wasting your time here for three fucking weeks. Why are you here? Who sent you?”

Steve demeanor cracks, crumbling before him. “Oh, I-. No.”

“Don’t give me that shit. It was Obie or SHIELD, that fucking Agent. Right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t even know you-.”

“You know who I am.”

Steve bites back his words and bows his head. He whispers. “Yes.”

“Who sent you?”

Steve walks to the shop front and braces against the door. He’s not looking at Tony when he says, “Peggy.”

The anger drops out of him, falls out as if he’s heart plummets from his chest. “What? Aunt Peg-. What?”

“I’m Steve Rogers, and Peggy Carter sent me. She thought seeing you, being with you would help me.”

“Help?” Tony cannot piece what Steve’s saying together. “You’re actually him. You’re Captain America?”

“Yeah, I thought we established that already.”

“I didn’t fucking think it was real.” Tony says and rounds the counter.

“Yeah, I hung out at SHIELD for a while, trying to get my bearings. It didn’t work. I found Peggy. She told me about you. She said, I should find you.”

“You were dead.”

“In stasis, frozen for seventy years,” Steve says like he’s bored of telling the story, or of hearing it. 

“And you came here? How did you know where to find me?”

“SHIELD knew,” Steve says and shrugs. “I came because Peggy thought it would be a good idea.”

“But why?” Tony says and he stumbles backward with the realization that all this time SHIELD has known his whereabouts. He clutches onto the counter. He needs to get back downstairs, somewhere safe, somewhere away from the noise, the people.

“Peggy isn’t-.” Steve sighs and it feels as if he heaves the whole world with his breath. “Peggy isn’t good, she’s sick. She kept mentioning you. I’m not sure if she thought I should come see you or not, really. But I needed to get out, away from – from everything. It was a bad da- anyhow.” He stops and turns away from Tony. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

Tony thinks of the phone, how Steve never really used it, just looked at it. When he handled the phone his hands shook like the future was breaking him apart. 

“Don’t go,” Tony says.

Steve stops. Before he turns, he says. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, stay here. For as long as you need.”

Steve turns to face him and relief spreads over his face. “Thank you.”

For the first time, Tony thinks it might be okay, it might be good to be with someone.


	18. Tony says I love you first for aloobadu

The cacophony of sounds, the battle around him, feels distant and hollow. He hears none of it; he sees none of it. His brain feels water logged, washed and drowned all at once. He gulps for breath, the air around him is thick and clogs his lungs. He coughs but it only brings up the black soot. 

Crouching he holds on, tightly, wishing it would end. But then the end of the world shouldn’t be wished for to hurry up and God damned get here already. He shivers as he holds, as he cradles the broken body in his arms. He won’t let go, he’ll never leave him even if it means that he will die along with Steve.

Another crash, closer, more dangerous than the last. The battle is closing in and they will surely lose. There’s no question about it. Hell and the minions have taken over. Nightmares are simple fantasies in comparison to what’s out there now.

His dream, his hope lies shattered in his arms. He doesn’t want to look down, to see the ashen features, the only color the stain of blood on the inner ridge of his lower lip. But Tony already looked, already saw the fragments of his love, still and hopeless. 

He didn’t get here on time. He tried his best, he swears it. But the shield is broken and the world is on fire and Captain America is dying in his arms. 

He’ll never get to confess to him, to tell him that their fuck buddy arrangement meant so much more to him. The broken wreckage of the cityscape around him, the twisted metal and burning oil means nothing to him at all. It is the blood and the air that means anything. The air that Steve will no longer breathe, the blood that’s leaking out all over the pavement.

He wants to cry out, and beg for help, for mercy. But who would he beg. He’s a man of science, not of religion. He knows a god, fights side by side with a god, but he’s seen that god bleed, and fumble and fall. So who is to say, there’s anyone to call?

He rocks Steve in his arms, and wishes for one moment, one terrible moment of lucidity for him. So that he can tell Steve how much he meant, how much he will always mean to Tony. But he’ll never know, not now, not blasted and bleeding out in the middle of a heartless city.

He cups the side of Steve’s face, holding tight, holding, ready for the end. Cursing the tears that blind him, he whispers, “Stay with me, Cap, don’t go.”

Steve doesn’t answer, his head lolls back and his mouth drops open as blood leaks over his cheek. Tony smears it away and says, “Steve, please. I wanted to tell you, I wanted for you to hear me.”

The battle closes in around them. He can hear the artillery of the army as it tries to drive back their enemy. He’d tried, they all had. Even in the end, the Captain wouldn’t give in. He’d told them he would never surrender, he would die rather then give up the Earth and their freedom.

He buries his face in Steve’s shoulder, weeping as he shudders. “Steve, don’t leave. Please. This won’t mean anything if you’re not here with me.” 

Steve doesn’t answer, doesn’t respond but his body is lax, unmoving. Tony hears a roar of an engine and places his lips on the side of Steve’s face to kiss his cheek. Lightly, softly, he says, “I fooled myself, I was a fool. I always loved you. I love you, still.”

The wind and heat from the battle overcomes him, but then the roar becomes persistent, and he peers up and over his shoulder. A quinjet hovers and then sets down not ten yards from his position. The back hatch opens, and Natasha is screaming, “Come on, come on.”

“Medic, he’s hurt,” Tony yells back.

Instantly, a battered Thor races out of the jet with Sam at his side. They both look as if they’ve been bruised and beaten. It’s hard to imagine anything hurting Thor. Both Sam and Thor help scoop up Steve and Tony’s warning them, telling them to be careful.

When they get into the jet, Bruce is there, stunned, half dazed but the sight of Steve torn to pieces jolts him and he comes back to himself. The quinjet closes up, Hawkeye orders them to get ready to launch. Natasha and Bruce fly into action over Steve’s injured form. None of them are free of wounds, but Steve’s are the most egregious. 

Natasha retrieves the aid kit and she’s tearing bags open as Bruce cuts Steve’s uniform off. Someone is saying Steve’s not breathing and Sam has his hands cupped over Steve’s scorched chest, doing compressions. Tony watches, stands to the side, feels the weight of his suit, but doesn’t disengage it. It’s useless right now, it malfunctioned during the battle, right before Steve went down. 

He wants to collapse but he doesn’t. He stands and watches as his team tries to save their Captain, their leader. He thinks they haven’t a chance.

But he’s wrong. By the time they get to safety and finally to Medical, Bruce reports that Steve has – at least – a thread pulse. They cart him off, rushing him to the waiting doctors and nurses. Hours later, when Tony somehow loses the armor, and there’s coffee in his hands, the doctors come in and tell them they have to allow the serum to do the rest. 

Four days later, after sitting by Steve’s bed and watching him lay quietly, unmoving for hours, watching the light shift over the walls, seeing the shadows of his fear cover the room as twilight fell, Steve stirs.

It will be more days and many more hours before they remove the lines, the oxygen, the wires. It will be many more days when Steve can sit up for more than a few hours without needing to rest. By the time he’s dressing to go home, and starting to heal, he’s already talking about when he’ll return to the fight.

Steve’s pulling a t-shirt over his head when Tony walks into the hospital room. He nods to Hawkeye who sidelong glances at Tony, and then leaves the room. 

“Been a wild couple of weeks, huh,” Tony says. 

Steve frowns but doesn’t say anything right away. He still limps but it is less pronounced. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“’Bout the mission because I think we need some time off on that one,” Tony says and he’s not going to agree to go out on any mission anytime soon. 

Steve shakes his head. “Nope.”

“The new shield? I’m working on -.”

“Nope.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Pretty good, considering I died a week ago,” Steve says with a shrug. 

“Well, you do have a tendency to die,” Tony says, he’s trying for joking but it comes out rather choked. 

“I’ll try and work on that,” Steve says and waits as Tony stares everywhere but at Steve. “So, is that it then?”

“You said you wanted to talk to me,” Tony replies. 

“Yeah, I guess I did,” Steve says and settles onto the side of the bed. “Are we going to, is this it then?”

“This?”

“Well, things before were good,” Steve says. “Really good, but I thought-.” He stops and then spits it out. “Okay, is the deathbed confession of love the only one I’m getting here or are you going to come out and say it again?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You heard _that_.”

“Yes,” Steve says and crosses his arms. “Yes, I did.”

“Well, you were dead, you weren’t supposed to.”

“And your point is?”

Tony swallows down his retort and says, “Okay, I-.” He suddenly feels awkward, but that can’t be right because when does he ever feel awkward? He falls silent and the space grows more difficult to fill.

Steve waits and then sighs. “Fine. Tony, fine.” He throws up his hands and gets up from the bed. His leg gives out on him and Tony rushes to his side, catching him even as he holds onto the bed to steadying himself.

“Are you okay?” Tony says and he’s breathing the same air as Steve straightens and their lips pass within centimeters of one another. 

Steve clears his throat and tentatively finds his balance. “Sorry.”

Tony doesn’t let go, he should. He knows he should escape, but he holds onto Steve and he edges closer. “I’m sorry, I should tell you.”

“Tell me,” Steve whispers as softly as Tony once did.

Tony cups Steve cheek, leans in and says, “I love you.”

Steve touches his forehead to Tony’s and smiles. “I love you, too.”

He cannot believe he almost missed this, almost let it slip by. The world burned around him, Steve nearly died, and he almost lost this moment. He captures it, and holds onto it. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Steve smiles.


	19. Drought for shinkonokokoro

He hates the desert. That is a given, considering everything that he’s been through in the desert. He tries to stay away from it at all costs. At one point, Steve had asked him if he wanted to go to Palm Springs, California. Seriously, it shouldn’t have been an issue, other than the fact it is a city built in the middle of a desert. He declined.

Steve got it, eventually. They both had their no go zones. Steve doesn’t particularly like the cold spots of the world, so they don’t spend a ton of time in Norway, Canada, or Siberia or even Iceland. They do go skiing on occasion but in places that are fairly innocuous. Not in daredevil areas across the geography of the Earth. In contrast for Tony, they stay away from exceeding hot places like deserts that happened to become cold places with no water at night. 

It works out for them both, because they love different cities and different cultures. They also both love the tropics and the more temperate zones. They spend tons of time relaxing on the Rivera, and on Tony’s yacht (because who knew Captain America is really a Navy guy at heart). While Steve hates cold water he has a tendency to absolutely adore the Caribbean and the warm, bath-like emerald waters. Tony even picked up house for a song in the Bahamas.

They enjoy.

That is when the world isn’t trying to rip itself apart at the seams. They celebrate and Steve learns a little about what it means to be young and in his twenties, because shit, man, that boy really does need to learn how to let go.

They don’t have huge amounts of time to enjoy, but they do, and Tony is grateful for every single moment he has Captain America on his arm and in his bed. He couldn’t ask for more, other than possibly for the world to stop fucking with them and to stop all the madness. Because he’d really like to just have a good time with his boyfriend.

But Steve is called away, and goes on a mission that none of the Avengers tag along. It isn’t like SHIELD always asks them to pair up, sometimes Steve ends up with another member of SHIELD. It really just depends on availability and skillset needed. This mission happens to be in the desert somewhere in Africa. Tony tries to persuade the higher ups (read that Fury) that Iron Man needs to go, but it doesn’t work so Tony is left behind – Hawkeye and Black Widow are on a mission already. Bruce would stick out like a sore thumb at this point and Thor is off world and off bonking his brains out with Jane – sometimes it is the same thing, he’s not sure.

So Steve goes and Tony still cannot understand the special skill set that a white boy might need in the middle of Africa, in the desert, that no one else at SHIELD could provide. He learns about what it is some six weeks later when Steve hasn’t returned – yet. He’s used to long missions where Steve cannot contact him. But what he learns infuriates him.

“We needed someone to cross the desert with a special and fragile artifact,” Fury says and Natasha, who has returned from her mission only glares at him. “It was touchy.”

“By touchy do you mean, some fuckwad piss ant?” Tony ask.

Everyone in the room looks at him because, of course, they have a full complement except for Steve now. 

“We had good intel that said-.”

Tony jumps up from his seat in the conference room. “You didn’t have good intel, because if you did, you wouldn’t be here telling me that Steve is missing and that you haven’t heard from him in weeks.”

“We knew he’d be in communications black out.”

“Because you put him in comm black out, because whomever you told him to go fetch demanded it and now, you can’t find him. Can you?” Tony says and he fights to keep his anger restrained, though he cannot figure why.

“We can still find him.”

He whips around and wants to beat Clint into the floor for not being there, for being assigned somewhere else. 

“Tell me, what other agent went with him?” Tony says.

Fury is amazingly silent.

“Fuck, you sent him in alone.”

“It was necessary, the cargo -.”

“The cargo necessitated it. Did you even get a verification that it wasn’t a set up?” Tony says and he squeezes his hands into fist. He wants to smack something. 

“We thought we had,” Fury says. “What we have now is a situation that we have to concentrate on and forget the other horseshit because your Captain is depending on you.”

He’s about to jump down Fury’s throat again, but then stops because – shit the man pulled the Captain card. “Fine, whatever, what leads do we have?”

They go over each and every scrap of evidence that leads them to a clear trail once they tease apart all of the false leads. Steve is in the Sahara, and he’s alone. They even have a fairly good clue about his location, because apparently he piloted a plane.

“This plane, it was part of the cargo?” Tony asks.

“Not,” Fury pauses. “Exactly.”

“Okay, so your cargo ended up trying to kill the world with the plane and Steve took in under his control and downed it in the Sahara, is that what repeat, but with a horrible twist, we’re looking at?” Tony asks.

“Just about.”

“Let’s get some info on the plane and see if we can locate it,” Clint says but Tony’s already on it with JARVIS. 

Over the course of the next three days they figure out an estimated radius of where Steve went down over the Sahara. It happens to be one of the most horrid places with little water, and no population except for the occasional wildlife.

They take off with Nat, Bruce, and Clint in the Quinjet and Tony alongside in his armor. Thor has rejoined their forces and follows. They search for the wreckage because Tony has to admit, they are looking for the remains of Captain America. He couldn’t have survived in this inhospitable environment. Part of him keeps the idea that he would know if Steve had died, he would feel it somewhere in the chest, in his heart, in his definition. All he feels is disbelief and emptiness.

Trailing the broken metal that they find, Tony feels the break in his resolve that Steve is still alive because maybe Steve is dead amongst the twisted plane parts. After a thorough search, they cannot locate a body. He tries not to think about the possibility that the heat from the fire might have been too hot, too bright for a human being to withstand. JARVIS assures him that none of the blacken streaks are human ashes, but he cannot say whether or not the desert already claimed whatever was left of Steve.

He refuses to immediately give up hope. His team mates allow him this final wish. He marches along the dunes through to the rocks jetting up. “Steve would have gone this way.” He continues and the rest of the team follows without a word.

“JARVIS scan for human life signs.”

There’s nothing, not a bit. Natasha tries to get him to surrender, to admit they found what they were looking for and whatever cargo that Steve had been fooled into transporting was long gone, along with whomever caused the crash.

It is practically twilight when he spots it. A small indentation really not, even a cave. How can it be a cave? It is, deep and dark.

He races – in his restricted style in the suit – toward it. The others try and stop him at first, but then they are all sprinting toward it as if it is an oasis in this god forsaken place. 

He’s there. Of course, he’s there. Holed up in a cave, bent over in a ball as if he curled in on himself as he waited for death. Tony stumbles, doesn’t enter, but Natasha rushes in, determination set on her features. 

Parts of the plane, the radio it looks like, are scattered about the interior of the cave. 

“Looks like he wanted to try and contact someone,” Barton says.

And Tony holds himself from batting Clint upside the head. “He didn’t.” That’s all Tony can manage.

“His wounds may be been too egregious.”

Tony winces as Natasha reaches out to the corpse, because it is a corpse. No one could survive the crash, injured and then the long days and nights in the desert. The horror before him reminds Tony of those mummy movies. The dry desert desiccated his love, dehydrated and gaunt. He gags, and Bruce holds his shoulder, turns him away.

Tony wrenches the faceplate off, he doesn’t want to puke in the suit. As he does, he hears JARVIS speaking.

“I am detecting life signs, sir.”

The bile in his throat burns, but he chokes out, “What?”

“Sir, I am detecting life signs. Captain Rogers is in a kind of stasis, not dissimilar to the one he had been in during his time in the ice.”

“Christ,” he says and shrugs Bruce’s hand off. “JARVIS is detecting life signs.”

“What?” Bruce yelps and hurries to Natasha’s side, who has moved the body – no Steve- to lay him out.

“No Riga mortis,” Natasha reports and suddenly they are no longer recovering a body, but trying to revive the injured. “He’s severely dehydrated.”

“Shit,” Clint coughs. “He looks like a damned mummy.”

Steve’s features are sunken and dried. It is the hottest part of the summer on the Sahara. He looks skeletal, and his hair like dried brittle flowers. 

“Shall I fly him to safety?” Thor asks.

Before Tony can answer, Natasha directs, “We need to get him on the Quinjet and get him to medical ASAP.”

Tony doesn’t protest, because he’s too frightened to even touch Steve. His body is so frail, so sunken he may just disintegrate before them. 

However large Thor might be, he gently scoops up Steve and cradles him to his chest. They trek across the barren landscape as the heat of the summer burns the sands and rocks. Once they get into the Quinjet, Hawkeye takes the controls with Natasha by his side. Thor settles down on the floor with Steve still huddled to his chest.

Bruce begins to work, peeling away what clothes remain to find the rusty stains of wounds and flesh torn and dried. 

Tony removes the armor; he has to since his stomach threatens with each new revelation before him. 

“Stark, do yourself a favor and get up here in the cockpit.” 

Tony considers arguing but he knows that Natasha is right and is offering him comfort. He follows orders. By the time they set down in the SHIELD base in Morocco, Bruce finally succeeds in getting an intravenous line placed. They start to feed Steve liquids and, before the medical personnel reach the Quinjet something miraculous happens. 

Steve moans.

Tony collapses.

In the following days as they grow into weeks, Steve makes a steady recovery. At one week it is robust enough to transfer him State side. The entire team follows, and Tony stays at his side. He’s still too weak to speak more than a few words at a time and he sleeps more often than not. What he longs for Tony sees, in his eyes and holds on tight and whispers words of comfort.

Within a month, Steve’s recovery is nearly complete. Waiting outside Steve’s hospital room as the doctors do a final assessment, Tony scribbles on his StarkPad.

“What’s that?” Natasha says and bends over his shoulder. He’s sitting in a decidedly uncomfortable chair.

“Just a list,” Tony says and tries to get it out of her sight.

She snatches it and then reads it. “Quite a list.”

“Yes,” Tony says and crosses his arms. “Now give it back.”

“You do realize this list effectively leaves Steve nowhere on Earth he’s allowed. Places that have freezing temperatures, places prone to drought. Places with hot temperatures, places with large bodies of water, or sand, or trees. Trees, Stark?”

“You never know, that’s probably the next thing that will-.”

She offers him the pad back and then rolls her eyes when he just stares at it. She places it on the chair next to him. “Listen you can’t wrap him up and expect him to stay indoors and safe somewhere.”

“I can damn well try.”

She raises an eyebrow as if in challenge to him. “You can try.”

She leaves and he’s left with the list and his memories of Steve nearly dead. The doctors shuffle out of the room and report that everything looks good, that Steve is well on his way to recovery.

Slipping in the room, Tony finds Steve sitting on the bed in the hospital gown. 

“Hey,” Steve says and he looks weary.

“You okay?”

“Just a little tired, the doctors think my energy will come back soon.”

“Yeah, let’s get your clothes. They discharged you.” He rifles through the bag he brought to bring Steve home. 

“I don’t understand. They say I was in stasis again, but it’s taking so much longer to get back my strength. I don-.”

“What?” Tony says and whips around to Steve. “You don’t get it. How about this – you were nearly fucking mummified. God damn it, I – you were – like skeletal-.” He shudders and the tears fall and he cannot stop them.

Warm, strong arms encircle him and he sinks into Steve’s embrace. Steve is making little shushing noises and lightly stroking his hands through Tony’s hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“I can’t lose you like that.”

“You didn’t, Tony. I’m here.”

Tony closes his eyes and allows the luxury of Steve’s embrace to overcome his fears. After a moment he says, “And surprisingly strong.”

Steve kisses the crown of Tony’s head. “Let’s go home.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says.

When they leave, Tony clasps Steve’s hand and promises never to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> The weekend of Feb 13-16 2015 I am taking prompts to celebrate. Get in on the fun [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winterstar95)
> 
> By the way if any of these are stories that you would be interested in an expanded verse or story, please drop me a line!


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